Читать книгу Aaron Burr: A Biography - Nathan Schachner - Страница 36

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As a civilian, it became Burr’s first duty to recruit his shattered health. This, however, was not to prove an easy task. It was to be over a year before he was sufficiently recovered to pick up the threads of his interrupted career. To the anguish of body there had been added another torment, no less keen because of its purely psychological character. He had fallen in love.

In 1777, while stationed at Ramapo, he had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Theodosia Prevost, who, with her younger children, her sister and her mother, resided at Paramus, but a short distance away. Her husband, Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Marc Prevost, of the British Army, was then in the West Indies on duty with his regiment. Technically, therefore, she was an enemy, and to be treated as such.

But the American officers of the immediate vicinity did not consider her in that light. In spite of her marriage, she was herself of American birth and lineage. Her father, Theodosius Bartow, had been a lawyer in Shrewsbury, New Jersey. Her mother, Anne Stillwell, could trace her descent from Nicholas Stillwell, one of the earliest settlers and tobacco planters in the Colony of Virginia.

Theodosius Bartow died in 1746, immediately before the birth of a daughter, Theodosia. The widow, Anne Stillwell Bartow, shortly thereafter married Captain Philip de Visme of the British Army, by whom, at the date of his death in 1762, she had given little Theodosia five half-brothers and sisters.

Theodosia Bartow herself, at the tender age of seventeen, was married to Colonel Prevost, also of His Majesty’s Forces. The young wife bore, in fairly rapid succession, five children to him—three daughters, Sally, Anne Louisa and Mary Louisa; and two sons, John Bartow and Augustine James Frederick, who, though but mere lads at the time of the Revolution, followed in their father’s footsteps and were serving as ensigns with the British forces.

So that, during the entire course of the war, her position continued to be one of great delicacy and apprehension. In spite of her own impeccable ancestry, her husband and two sons were even then in arms against the rebellious Colonies; she was related in various ways to a whole swarm of active participants on the British side. Accordingly, there was much grumbling and covetous casting of eyes among the patriotic Whigs of Paramus and the vicinity.

New Jersey had followed the general trend and passed severe laws against Tories and British sympathizers. Many super-patriots demanded that they be executed forthwith against Mrs. Prevost; that her absent husband’s estate be forfeited in accordance with law, and that she and her three little girls be forced to withdraw inside the British lines, where she belonged.

She had, however, numerous and powerful friends, who continued to exert themselves unweariedly on her behalf. Her home, the Hermitage, a great red sandstone house, was the popular resort of the American officers. There was an air of spaciousness, of culture and hospitality about the place that was exceedingly grateful to polished gentlemen whose nerves had become a bit exacerbated from the crudities and hardships of camp life. James Monroe, later to become a President of the United States, interceded vigorously in her behalf to stay the harsh execution of the laws. So did General Lee.^[122]

She was also personally acquainted with General Washington. When her half-brother, Peter de Visme, was captured at sea by the Americans, she pleaded with the General for him to exercise his influence to promote an exchange. Washington declined, in the politest of terms, on the ground that he never interfered in the disposal of marine prisoners.^[123]

Burr had become a frequent and welcome visitor at her home during the year 1777, and even when his regiment removed to other spheres of activity, he kept up a cordial communication and correspondence. In 1778 he managed to obtain permission for her and her sister, Miss de Visme, to pass to British-occupied New York and return to the American lines.^[124]

It was a rather strange friendship that ripened gradually into something more intimate and substantial. She was ten years his senior, married to a British officer, and the mother of five children. She was not beautiful—contemporary opinion did not consider her so, nor do her portraits belie the rumor. She had indeed a disfiguring scar on her forehead, the result of a burn. She was pious, too, and viewed with a certain abhorrence her youthful admirer’s skeptical attitude toward revealed religion. Furthermore, her health was precarious—no doubt the cancer that was ultimately to prove fatal was already gnawing at her vitals. She was not rich, and she was the wife of another.

Burr, on the other hand, though slight of form, was a striking figure in any company. He impressed men with his lofty demeanor and military erectness, with his proved bravery and wide knowledge. He fascinated all women with his polished and courtly air, his charming manners, his graceful demeanor and flattering attentions. He was young and handsome, of excellent family, and his jet-black eyes pierced all beholders with their almost unbearable brilliance.

Yet Mrs. Prevost held certain qualities that were rare and unusual. Besides a consummate grace and charm, she was exceptionally well read and cultured in an age when women were not considered the proper recipients of an education. She and Burr had many interests in common—they loved books and paintings, they both welcomed the impact of general ideas, and they found exciting possibilities in discussions on the respective merits of Voltaire, Rousseau, Lord Chesterfield, and the French precursors of the enlightenment. The Hermitage was well stocked with the latest volumes from France and England, and Burr delved eagerly into their fascinating contents.

But—she was married to another! It is quite probable that the turmoil aroused in Burr by the anomalous condition of their relations had something to do with the gradual breakdown of his health. He was also justly disturbed over the unremitting efforts of the patriots to dislodge her from their midst and to seize control of her rather slender fortune.

In September, 1779, Burr was in New Haven sighing dolefully for New Jersey—and Mrs. Prevost—yet refusing to return. He wrote his friend Billy Patterson that he saw no company, partook of no amusements, and that he was always grave. His delicacy did him credit. By this time, evidently, he had fathomed the state of his feelings for Mrs. Prevost, and had realized that the matter could be allowed to proceed no further. Yet his interest in her affairs did not flag. Patterson wrote in response to his anxious inquiry that “I cannot tell you what has become of Mrs. Prevost’s affairs. About two months ago I received a very polite letter from her. She was apprehensive that the commissioners would proceed. It seems they threatened to go on. I wrote them on the subject, but I have not heard the event.”^[125]

Then came the news that Colonel Prevost had died in the West Indies. The repercussions of this startling shift in their relations are fairly obvious. Instead of sighing for the unattainable, the beloved woman was now within reach. He hurried to Paramus to condole—and console. Up to this time, since his resignation from the army, he had drifted aimlessly. But now he became imbued with new energy. Law, at which he had only begun to nibble at the outbreak of the Revolution, engaged his attention once more. He actually commenced to read under the direction of a Mr. Osmer in Connecticut. He wrote to his friend, Colonel Robert Troup, who was most eager that they study together. But Troup preferred Mr. Stockton of Princeton as a tutor, and urged Burr to join him at Princeton.^[126]

But something happened to delay Burr’s plans. The ferment, the excitement, had been too much for him. On February 16, 1780, he was writing Patterson from Middletown in melancholy accents. “My health, which was till of late very promising, seems to decline a little. This circumstance will oblige me to alter my course of life ... My health will bear no imposition. I am obliged to eat, drink, sleep and study, as it directs.”^[127] To Robert Troup he avowed strong objections both to Mr. Stockton and to Princeton, and suggested Patterson, now Attorney General of New Jersey, as a better friend and more efficient tutor.^[128]

For a considerable period Burr continued to shift restlessly from one place to another, still unable to come to grips with his chosen profession. There was considerable talk, also, concerning his very manifest interest in Paramus and in the dwellers at the Hermitage. Few, however, were aware of the real situation. As late as June, 1780, Robert Troup was still in the dark. He even wrote his friend, “The Miss Livingstons have inquired in a very friendly manner about you, and expect you will wait upon them when you pass this way. Since I have been here, I have had an opportunity of removing entirely the suspicion they had of your courting Miss De Visme [Mrs. Prevost’s young half-sister]. They believe nothing of it now, and attribute your visits at Paramus to motives of friendship for Mrs. Prevost and the family. Wherever I am, and can with propriety, you may be assured I shall represent this matter in its true light.”^[129]

Indeed, Burr seems to have been present that night in the Hermitage when Peggy Arnold, the wife of the traitorous Benedict Arnold, heavily veiled and under close guard, halted there on her way from West Point to New York. She was that Peggy Shippen who had been a playmate of Burr’s for some years during his childhood, and she was likewise intimate with Mrs. Prevost. To the latter, so the story goes, she confessed her complete implication in the conspiracy; though at the time, and for a considerable period thereafter, she was universally believed to be the innocent victim of her husband’s machinations.

Other matters were also worrying young Burr at this time. The state of his finances, for instance. His patrimony had, contrary to report, been rather modest. He had spent it with a careless, albeit warm-hearted, generosity, and a reckless disregard for the future. The pay of an officer in the Continental Army was miserably small, when measured in terms of gold currency, and even that pittance was not always available. Burr dipped into his own pocket for his own expenses, for the general welfare of his soldiers and brother officers. No call upon him for funds was ever refused. His friends, too, were forever borrowing. He tided Troup over some embarrassing financial stringencies with substantial loans, with the proffer of horses and an adequate equipage. He paid for a tutor to Mrs. Prevost’s two boys, now out of the King’s Service, to the tune of 60 pounds a year, New York currency. This rendered a double service—to the woman he loved, and to the tutor, one Major Alden, an impecunious Revolutionary friend.^[130]

And, at about this time, he received unwelcome news. He had, to recoup his fortunes, taken a considerable share in the outfitting of the Hawk, an American privateer. Instead of bringing back fat prizes, however, she had been grounded off Long Island by a British warship, and the sea did the rest. It represented a substantial loss to Burr.^[131]

He continued ill and distraught right through the autumn of 1780, taking the mineral waters in the “Clove,” staying as much as possible at Paramus. Then he buckled down to the study of the law and serious work. Together with Troup, who had managed finally to escape from the clutches of Mr. Stockton, he placed himself in the charge of William Patterson, his old friend and college chum.

But he soon became dissatisfied. Patterson was a methodical, plodding man, whose ideas on the study of the law were along conventional and settled lines. He demanded a thorough grounding in theory, and a careful combing of ancient texts, before any attempt was to be made to learn the practical applications in office and court. An admirable, conscientious procedure, indeed, but—it would take two to three years before the young aspirant could branch out on his own!

This, Burr was not prepared to do. He was impatient, in a hurry now. For one thing, his funds had run out; for another, he had come to a fairly definite understanding with the widowed Theodosia Prevost, and marriage would have to be held off until he could earn a living. Even more important, it seems, was another consideration. In the high tide of resentment against Tories and lukewarm pettifoggers, the patriots of the still warring State of New York were agitating for a law disqualifying from legal practice all those who refused to take the new oath of loyalty. The law actually was passed in November, 1781. Inasmuch as the legal profession in New York was heavily Tory in its sympathies, the passage and enforcement of the proposed law meant a notable opportunity to young lawyers of the proper patriotic persuasion to step in and reap the harvest in a field from which their established elders had been ruthlessly removed. And it would be a case of first come, first served.

So, without any diminution in their continued friendship, Burr removed from Patterson’s office in the spring of 1781 to that of Thomas Smith, a prominent New York attorney, who, because of the British occupation, was compelled to practise in Haverstraw. Smith had no such scruples as the steady-going Patterson, and agreed, for a specified consideration, to permit the impatient young man to study according to his own plan. Burr was to read law and propose questions based upon his readings in writing. These Smith was to answer, also in writing, with appropriate legal points and citations; and his answers in turn laid the basis for further questions.^[132] It was a novel arrangement, but one evidently suited to Burr’s peculiar genius.

He studied hard and diligently, spending from sixteen to twenty hours a day on his law. Yet he found time to keep up a steady correspondence with Theodosia Prevost. He had already proposed marriage, but she, being older and more experienced in the marital state, preferred to wait before yielding her final assent.

“Our being the subject of much inquiry, conjecture, and calumny,” she wrote, “is no more than we ought to expect. My attention to you was ever pointed enough to attract the observation of those who visited the house. Your esteem more than compensated for the worst they could say. When I am sensible I can make you and myself happy, I will readily join you to suppress their malice. But, till I am confident of this, I cannot think of our union.”^[133]

They held long, learned conversations, through the mails, on authors and doctrines and systems of education. She was pleased with his enthusiastic admiration for Voltaire, but she delivered severe strictures on his manifest tendency to exalt Chesterfield above Rousseau as an educator. “The indulgence you applaud in Chesterfield,” she told him, “is the only part of his writings I think reprehensible. Such lessons from so able a pen are dangerous to a young mind, and ought never to be read till the judgment and heart are established in virtue. If Rousseau’s ghost can reach this quarter of the globe, he will certainly haunt you for this scheme—’tis striking at the root of his design, and destroying the main purport of his admirable production. Les foiblesses de l’humanité, is an easy apology; or rather, a license to practice intemperance; and is particularly agreeable and flattering to such practitioners, as it brings the most virtuous on a level with the vicious.” These were strong words to address to a young man whose code of ethics and mode of life were to be influenced largely by the easy-going morality, the polished urbanity and intellectual emancipation of the English nobleman, but she hastened to soften the blow by assuring him that “you have, undoubtedly, a mind superior to the contagion.”^[134]

At the same time she was writing to Burr’s sister, Sally Reeve, and her husband, in the most lively and affectionate fashion. She had already visited them at Litchfield. “I lament with you,” she wrote Reeve, “the indisposition of our dear Sally. If a tender feeling for her sufferings, a most ardent wish for her recovery, & your mutual happiness, are a recommendation to your esteem, I have an undoubted claim.”^[135] It is evident that, though she still held her young suitor at arm’s-length, she had made up her mind concerning the ultimate outcome.