Читать книгу Aaron Burr: A Biography - Nathan Schachner - Страница 38

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A few months before, on November 20, 1781, the New York Legislature had finally passed the law disqualifying from practice all “attorneys, solicitors, and counsellors at law” who could not produce satisfactory certificates, showing their attachment to the Whig cause during the War. At one swoop the leading gentlemen of the Bar were dislodged from their lucrative profession. Only a handful of qualifying patriots remained—the truly patriot were still busily engaged in the Revolutionary service—and the whole tempting field was theirs.

Burr looked the situation over and decided to open his office in Albany. The town was small, but comparatively wealthy. It was the resort of the great upstate patroons and landowners; it was the mart of a flourishing fur trade with the Indians, and—during the War—the channel for illicit, but lucrative, bartering with the enemy via Canada.

He decided also that it was time to marry. Though he was practically penniless by now, he had no doubts as to the future—success in the profession of law seemed assured.

Accordingly he hastened back to Paramus, where, on July 2, 1782, “Aaron Burr of the State of N. York Esqr and Theodosia Prevost of Bergen County, State of N. Jersey,” were “joined in lawful wedlock.”^[141]

The wedding, Theodosia declared in lively fashion to her new sister-in-law, Sally Reeve, was “attended with two singular circumstances, the first is that it cost us nothing. Brown and Caty [the latter a half-sister of Theodosia, and the former, Dr. Brown, Caty’s husband] provided abundantly and we improved the opportunity. The fates led Burr on in his old coat; it was proper my gown should be of suitable gauze; ribbons, gloves, etc., were favors from Caty. The second circumstance was that the parson’s fees took the only half Joe Burr was master of; we partook of the good things as long as they lasted and then set out for Albany, where the want of money is our only grievance.” But “the attention of my dear Burr is not to be equalled” and “the air of Albany is healthy, beer in perfection.”^[142]

The newly married couple—and the bride’s two young boys—did not suffer long from want of money. (The three girls seem never to have become a part of the Burr household—evidently they were taken over and reared by the Prevosts.) There was, as has been stated, a sudden paucity of lawyers, and Burr, of good family, attractive, intellectual, and assiduous in his devotion to his profession, had no difficulty in obtaining soon a veritable swarm of clients.

In spite of his immediate success, however, he rightly felt that New York, the metropolis, held greater prospects for a lawyer. As soon, therefore, as the preliminary treaty of peace was signed in 1783, Burr made preparations for the transfer of his family and office down the Hudson. After several abortive negotiations, he finally decided on the Verplanck house as his new home and law office, “in Wall Street, next Door but one to the City Hall.”^[143] By November, 1783, just as the English marched out of New York, and the triumphant Americans moved in to take their place, he was safely installed in his new quarters, a bit dubious, it may be, over the adventure and the additional expense, but resolved, nevertheless, to make a go of it.

The Burrs brought with them from Albany an addition to the family. On June 21, 1783, a girl baby, Theodosia Burr, named after the mother, was born. “Providence smiled upon our wishes ... and blessed us with a lovely daughter,” the former Mrs. Prevost wrote joyfully to her brother-in-law, Tapping Reeve. “My suffering was shorter than my most sanguine hopes had dared to flatter, & have ended in my perfect recovery ... will you believe me Reeve, when I tell you the dear little girl has the eyes of your Sally, and promises to be as handsome. I would also have given her her name; but Burr insisted on calling her Theo—assure my sister from me that I submitted with the greatest regret.”^[144]

Later, on June 20, 1785, there was to be a second child to their marriage—also a girl baby.^[145] This time Theodosia Burr’s wishes were to control, and the child was named Sally. But Sally did not survive long. She died sometime in October, 1788. There were no others. Little Theodosia, however, was to grow into brilliant womanhood, the sensation of her day, the living epitome of her father’s rules and regulations, his philosophy and system of education, at once the worshiper and the worshiped, and ultimately a fruitful source of legend and myth because of her tragic, untimely end—Theodosia, in whom the blood of Aaron Burr and of his forbears flowed with undiminished vigor.

Burr was not mistaken in his assumptions when he removed to New York. The Tory lawyers hastily evacuated the town with the British, fearing the wrath of the approaching Americans. With them went wealth and respectability and prestige. But a new crop appeared; young, vigorous attorneys fired with enthusiasm and the proper patriotic spirit, and soon to prove themselves more keen, more brilliant, greater in every respect than the stolid, if substantial, men they displaced. Besides Aaron Burr, there were Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Robert Troup, Rufus King, James Kent, and others; names that soon became inextricably interwoven with the history of the new nation.

Business prospered, his office was filled with clients, and his name moved rapidly to the foreground in the legal profession. He was happy in his marriage; Theodosia Burr proved a tender, understanding and wise wife, a fit mate intellectually and spiritually for him. Their letters, on those occasions when the law called him to Albany or Westchester or New Jersey, were no longer prim, repressed dissertations that foreswore sentiment and dealt only in “general ideas”; they were ardent, personal, loving, filled with domestic incidents, laments over continued absences, accounts of little Theo’s illnesses.

She writes him: “My Aaron had scarce quitted the door when I regretted my passiveness. Why did I consent to his departure? Can interest repay the sacrifice? can aught on earth compensate for his presence? ... My Aaron, dark is the hour that separates my soul from itself ... Heaven protect my Aaron; preserve him, restore him to his adoring mistress.”^[146] One would scarcely recognize the rather frigid bluestocking who once had written a set composition on the respective merits of Rousseau, Voltaire and Chesterfield.

But then again, it would be difficult in the following letter to detect that ardent young lover who had exhorted his mistress to eschew sentiment and confine herself to “general ideas.” Writes Burr: “I run from court to waft you a memorandum of affection. ... I cannot leave this till Sunday or Monday. Then to Westchester Court. The return to joy and Theo. cannot be till Thursday or Friday ... I read your memorandum ten times a day, and observed it as religiously as ever monk did his devotion. Yesterday I burnt it. To me it seemed like sacrilege.”^[147]

Marriage had mellowed the didactic young man. There was little Theo, also, whom he adored, and the two Prevost youngsters, whom he loved as devotedly as though they were his own.

There were flaws, however, in the unalloyed bliss. In spite of the rapid growth of his law practice, Burr was already suffering from that state of financial destitution that was destined to become chronic with him. His inheritance had been dissipated with careless, generous fingers during the War. Now that he was married and responsible for the needs and welfare of a family, the money that he made so readily, slipped even more readily and easily through his fingers. Never was he to learn the value of those shining bits of tinsel. He loved good food, good wine, stately houses, splendid furnishings, books and paintings and lavish entertainment. He could never resist an appeal to his pocket, whether based on need, alleged acquaintance, or a common service during the Revolution. He was liberal and generous to a fault. As a result, no matter what he earned, he spent much more, and constantly the specter of innumerable borrowings and the dates of approaching payments loomed to torment and engross his energies with frantic scurryings and borrowings from Peter to pay Paul.

More important, at this immediate time, was the constant ill-health of Theodosia Burr. It runs like a dark thread throughout their married life, thickening and overwhelming everything else with its shadow as the cancer spread within her vitals.

“My [constitution],” she told Tapping Reeve despairingly, “is quite worn out, & my spirits entirely exhausted, my mind and memory much impaired. I believe I have been as near a state insanity as possible, indeed there are hours in which I am confidant it still threatens me; how often do I wish the conversation of my friends to releive those horrors that can never be described—how often I feel the want of that tenderness, that kind pity that you have so freely granted me ... Thus abandoned to nature & my own efforts, I pass many succeeding lingering hours—there are cares, & circumstances that demand my attention, & rouse my feelings, when these pass off my mind relapses to its former melancholy companions who are ever in waiting ... In the morning I wake with regret—at night I lye down with the hope of never waking to the disappointments of another day.”^[148]

Poor lady! The shadow of death was already upon her, and it evoked an expression as eloquent in its deep-seated melancholy, as somber and tragic in its rooted despair, as anything in all literature. But this was later, when her invalidism had become confirmed and no longer subject to a facile optimism.

In the meantime she was happy, keeping house for her “adored Aaron,” watching her two sons grow to sturdy manhood, the baby Theo an endless source of joy and loving nonsense, maintaining constant communication with Sally and Tapping Reeve, for whom she displayed a surprising affection. “Is it possible,” she exclaimed to Sally, “you can suspect your Theo of ingratitude, of a fickle heart. Do you believe I can ever forget your friendship & your tender attention, the consolations you gave me when none but you could console. Your brother was the first friend I ever made, you the second. That place you still hold in my heart & ever will.”^[149]