Читать книгу Aaron Burr: A Biography - Nathan Schachner - Страница 43

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By 1786 the Burrs had moved to 10 Little Queen Street, or what is now known as Maiden Lane. In 1789 they removed once more to quarters on the corner of Nassau and Maiden Lane, more spacious, with garden and wonderful grapes. In 1791 they were at No. 4 Broadway, to remain there until the final hegira to Richmond Hill.

Mrs. Burr’s two boys, John and Augustin Prevost, joined their stepfather’s legal staff and applied themselves diligently, faithfully and loyally to their work. Between Burr and his stepsons there was always to be mutual affection and devotion.

Between Burr and his wife ardent love had deepened to an abiding trust. His law practice took him on numerous, extended trips, but always they were in each other’s thoughts. He writes from Philadelphia that “I have been to twenty places to find something to please you, but can see nothing that answers my wishes.”^[167] She replies that “all, in silent expectation, await the return of their much-loved lord, but all faintly when compared to thy Theo.”^[168] And little Theo, by now a plump, beautiful little baby of almost two, equally adored her father. Says her mother: “Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty times a day; calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your chair to be filled by any of the family ... O, my Aaron! how many tender, grateful things rush to my mind in this moment; how much fortitude do I summon to suppress them! You will do justice to their silence; to the inexpressible affection of your plus tendre amie.”^[169]

Sally, the second child, was born, and died. Mrs. Burr herself, as her letters testify, was in perpetual ill health. She finds herself unable to climb stairs; she is prey to frequent fits of melancholia. But little Theo is a constant source of joy. “Your dear little Theo grows the most engaging child you ever saw. She frequently talks of, and calls on, her dear papa. It is impossible to see her with indifference.” And again, “I really believe, my dear, few parents can boast of children whose minds are so prone to virtue. I see the rewards of our assiduity with inexpressible delight, with a gratitude few experience.”^[170] And still again, “Your dear Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of without an apparent melancholy; insomuch that her nurse is obliged to exert her invention to divert her, and myself avoid to mention you in her presence. She was one whole day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment is not of a common nature.”^[171]

There was much of prescience in these observations. The singular and overwhelming attachment between Theodosia Burr and her father is still one of the great devotions in all history. Nor was her mother far behind. Her letters are instinct with the breath of a lofty and noble nature; all her life was laid at the feet of Aaron Burr. He reciprocated in kind, though not to the extent and sacrificial depths of his wife. How could he? He was a man of affairs, immersed in the world of men, of law, of politics, of a hundred and one distractions. Whereas she, held to a round of domesticity, afflicted with an incurable disease, brooded on her love and fed it with small, still hands. “Tell me, Aaron, why do I grow every day more tenacious of thy regard? Is it possible my affection can increase? Is it because each revolving day proves thee more deserving?”^[172]

Burr’s letters are tender, thoughtful, considerate, breathing a manifest sincerity. Every remedy of which he hears is promptly reported home in the steadily lessening hope that here is finally the cure; he buttonholes every doctor, in Philadelphia, in Albany, in New York, seeking the causes of that obscure disease which is wasting his beloved Theo. He truly and devotedly loved her—even though he had become involved in certain disputes with her relatives.

General Maunsell, her uncle, residing in London, had originally approved of the marriage. He had written his sister-in-law, Mrs. Watkins, a widow in New York, and in search of legal advice, that “Mr. Burr will counsel you in all this. I hear a great character of him, and I think Theo was lucky in meeting so good a man.”^[173]

But when he came to America the following year (1784) to attend to certain real estate interests in New York and to act with Burr as co-Trustee under the will of Mrs. de Visme, Theodosia’s mother, the tune changed. Burr took exception to the General’s inquisitorial inquiries into his management of the estate. Furthermore, the military man seems to have bogged down completely in a mass of figures. They quarreled. What happened thereafter is vague. The General was arrested in 1787. It has been assumed that his incarceration was at Burr’s instance, but there is no basis for such an assumption in Maunsell’s simple statement that Burr paid him “the sum of £87: 10: 11, as on that day I was arrested, and he paid for me £125 out of all the money he had of mine in his hands.”^[174] If anything, it would seem that he was being assisted in his extremity.

In any event there was a definite break with the English branch of Theodosia’s family. Maunsell was later to splutter to another relative: “Liddy tells me that Mr. Burr expects a seat in congress, and that he had taken Big Symmon’s house in Wall Street. As I shall never more have any intercourse with him, or his family, his changes in life give me no concern, or pleasure; he is no friend to your house.”^[175] And Burr was to remark sarcastically to his wife: “You have really a Distressing family. I hope it has by this time diminished.”^[176]

But this latter remark was contained in a letter remarkable for its general bitterness of tone and fault-finding. Burr was ill at the time—as he constantly was during the middle years of his life—Mrs. Burr was ailing and a bit querulous, and she had crossed him in several ways. A single letter cannot be made the basis for a general trend of affairs, as has been attempted. As a matter of fact, within a few days thereafter, their correspondence is again replete with the tenderest and most warm-hearted expressions. The cloud had vanished.