_The Story of Richmond Hill_
If my days of fancy and romance were not past, I could find
here an ample field for indulgence!--ABIGAIL ADAMS,
writing from Richmond Hill House, in 1783.
I had left dear St. John's,--for this time my pilgrim feet were turned
a bit northward to a shrine of romance rather than religion. I
meandered along Canal, and traversed Congress Street. Congress, by the
bye, is about two yards long; do you happen to know it?
In a few moments, I was standing in a sort of trance at that
particular point of Manhattan marked by the junction of Charlton and
Varick streets and the end of Macdougal, about two hundred feet north
of Spring. And there was nothing at all about the scenic setting, you
would surely have said, to send anyone into any kind of a trance.
On one side of me was an open fruit stall; on another, a butcher's
shop; the Cafe Gorizia (with windows flagrant with pink
confectionery), and the two regulation and indispensable saloons to
make up the four corners.
In a sentimentally reminiscent mood, I took out a notebook, to write
down something of my impressions and fancies. But there was a general
murmur of war-inflamed suspicion, and I desisted and fled. How was I
to tell them that there, where I stood, in that very citified and very
nearly squalid environment (it was raining that day too), I could yet
see, quite distinctly, the shadowy outlines of the one-time glorious
House of Richmond Hill?
They were high gates and ornate, one understands. I visualised them
over and against the dull and dingy modern buildings. Somewhere near
here where I was standing, the great drive-way had curved in between
the tall, fretted iron posts, to that lovely wooded mound which was
the last and most southern of the big Zantberg Range, and seemingly of
a rare and rich soil. The Zantberg, you remember, started rather far
out in the country,--somewhere about Clinton Place and Broadway,--and
ran south and west as far as Varick and Van Dam streets.
I had passed on Downing Street one house at least which looked as
though it had been there forever and ever, but just here it was most
commonplace and present-century in setting, and the roar of traffic
was in my ears. But I am sure that I saw Richmond Hill House
plainly,--that distinguished structure which was described by an
eyewitness as "a wooden building of massive architecture, with a lofty
portico supported by Ionic columns, the front walls decorated with
pilasters of the same order and its whole appearance distinguished by
a Palladian character of rich though sober ornament." We learn further
that its entrance was broad and imposing, that there were balconies
fronting the rooms on the second story. The inside of the house was
spaciously partitioned, with large, high rooms, massive stairways with
fine mahogany woodwork, and a certain restful amplitude in everything
which was a feature of most of the true Colonial houses.
Thomas Janvier quotes from some anonymous writer of an earlier day:
"From the crest of this small eminence was an enticing prospect; on
the south, the woods and dells and winding road from the lands of
Lispenard, through the valley where was Borrowson's tavern; and on the
north and west the plains of Greenwich Village made up a rich prospect
to gaze on."
Lispenard's Salt Meadows lie still, I suppose, under Canal Street
North. I have not been able to place exactly Borrowson's tavern. Our
old friend, Minetta Water, which flowed through the site of
Washington Square, made a large pond at the foot of Richmond
Hill,--somewhere about the present junction of Bedford and Downing
streets. In winter it offered wonderful skating; in summer it was a
dream of sylvan loveliness, and came to be called Burr's Pond, after
that enigmatic genius who later lived in the house.
One more description--and the best--of Richmond Hill as it was the
century before last; this one written by good Mistress Abigail, wife
of John Adams, one-time vice-president of the United States, during
their occupancy of the place. Said she, openly adoring the Hill at all
times:
"In natural beauty it might vie with the most delicious spot
I ever saw. It is a mile and a half from the city of New
York. The house stands upon an eminence; at an agreeable
distance flows the noble Hudson, bearing upon its bosom
innumerable small vessels laden with the fruitful
productions of the adjacent country. Upon my right hand are
fields beautifully variegated with grass and grain, to a
great extent, like the valley of Honiton in Devonshire. Upon
my left the city opens to view, intercepted here and there
by a rising ground and an ancient oak. In front beyond the
Hudson, the Jersey shores present the exuberance of a rich,
well-cultivated soil. In the background is a large
flower-garden, enclosed with a hedge and some every handsome
trees. Venerable oaks and broken ground covered with wild
shrubs surround me, giving a natural beauty to the spot
which is truly enchanting. A lovely variety of birds
serenade me morning and evening, rejoicing in their liberty
and security."
The historian, Mary L. Booth, commenting on the above, says:
"This rural picture of a point near where Charlton now
crosses Varick Street naturally strikes the prosaic mind
familiar with the locality at the present day as a trick of
the imagination. But truth is stranger, and not infrequently
more interesting, than fiction."
And now go back to the beginning.
A very large section of this part of the island was held under the
grant of the Colonial Government, by the Episcopal Church of the city
of New York--later to be known more succinctly as Trinity Church
Parish. St. John's,--not built at that time, of course--is part of the
same property. This particular portion (Richmond Hill), as we may
gather from the enthusiastic accounts of those who had seen it, must
have been peculiarly desirable. At any rate, it appealed most strongly
to one Major Abraham Mortier, at one time commissary of the English
army, and a man of a good deal of personal wealth and position.
In 1760, Major Mortier acquired from the Church Corporation a big
tract including the especial hill of his desires and, upon it, high
above the green valleys and the silver pond, he proceeded to put a
good part of his considerable fortune into building a house and laying
out grounds which should be a triumph among country estates.
That he was a personage of importance goes without saying, for His
Majesty's forces had right of way in those days, in all things social
as well as governmental. He proceeded to entertain largely, as soon as
he had his home ready for it, and so it was that at that time Richmond
Hill established its deathless reputation for hospitality.
Mortier did not buy the property outright but got it on a very long
lease. Though his first name sounds Hebraic and his last Gallic, he
was, we may take it, a thoroughly British soul, for he called it
Richmond Hill to remind him of England. The people of New York used to
gossip excitedly over the small fortune he spent on those grounds, the
house was the most pretentious that the neighbourhood had boasted up
to that time. Of course the Warren place was much farther north, and
this particular locality was only just beginning to be fashionable.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON ARCH. "... Let us hope that we will always
keep Washington Square as it is today--our little and dear bit of
fine, concrete history, the one perfect page of our old, immortal New
York."]
A friend of the Commissary's, and a truly illustrious visitor at the
Hill, was Sir. Jeffrey Amherst, later Lord Amherst. He made Mortier's
house his headquarters at the close of his campaigns waged against
French power in America. He is really not so well known as he should
be, for in those tangled beginnings of our country we can hardly
overestimate the importance of any one determined or strategic move,
and it is due to Amherst, very largely, that half of the State of New
York was not made a part of Canada. Incidentally, Amherst College is
named for him.
The worthy Commissary died, it is believed, at about the time that
trouble started. On April 13th, in the memorable year 1776, General
Washington made "the Hill" his headquarters, and the house built by
the British army official was the scene of some of the most stirring
conferences that marked the beginning of the Revolution.
At the vitally important officers' councils held behind those tall,
white columns, there was one man so unusual, so brilliant, so
incomprehensible, that a certain baffling interest if not actual
romance attaches itself automatically to the bare utterance or
inscription of his name,--Aaron Burr. He was aide-de-camp to General
Putnam, and already had a vivid record behind him. It was during
Washington's occupancy of Richmond Hill that Burr grew to love the
place which was later to be his own home.
I confess to a very definite weakness for Aaron Burr. Few hopeless
romanticists escape it. Dramatically speaking, he is one of the most
striking figures in American history, and I imagine that I have not
been the first dreamer of dreams and writer of books who has haunted
the scenes of his flesh-and-blood activity in the secret,
half-shamefaced hope of one day happening upon his ghost!
From the day of his graduation from college at sixteen, he somehow
contrived to win the attention of everyone whom he came near. He still
wins it. We love to read of his frantic rush to the colours, guardian
or no guardian; of the steel in him which lifted him from a bed of
fever to join the Canadian expedition; of his daring exploits of
espionage disguised as a French Catholic priest; of a hundred and one
similar incidents in a life history which, as we read it, is far too
strange not to be true.
Spectacular he was from his birth, and even today his name upon a
page is enough to set up a whole theatre in our imaginations. Just one
incident comes to me at this moment. It is so closely associated with
the region with which this book is concerned, that I cannot but set it
down in passing.
The story runs that it was a mistake in an order which sent General
Knox of Silliman's Brigade to a small fort one mile from town (that
is, about Grand Street), known as "Bunker's Hill"--not to be
confounded with the other and more famous "Bunker"! It happened to be
a singularly unfortunate position. There was neither food nor water in
proper quantities, and the munitions were almost non-existent. The
enemy was on the island.
Whether Major Burr, of Putnam's division, was sent under some regular
authority, or whether he characteristically had taken the matter into
his own hands, the histories I have read do not tell. But they do tell
of his galloping up, breathless on a lathered horse, making the little
force understand the danger of their position, pleading with his
inimitable eloquence and advancing the reasons for their retreat at
once. The men were stubborn; they did not want to retreat. But he
talked. He proved that the English could take the scrap of a fort in
four hours; he exhorted and urged, and at last he won. They said they
would follow him. From that moment he took charge, and led them along
the Greenwich Road through the woods, skirting the swamps, fording the
rivers, to Harlem, to safety and to eventual victory.
This was only one of many instances in which his wit, his eloquence,
his good sense, his leadership and his unquestioned personal daring
served his country and served her well.
When Washington moved his headquarters to the Roger Morris house near
the Point of Rocks, a period of comparative mystery descended for a
time upon Richmond Hill. During the ensuing struggle, and before the
formal evacuation of New York, the house is supposed to have been
occupied off and on by British officers. But in 1783 they departed for
good! and in 1789, Vice-president John Adams and Mistress Abigail came
to live there.
We have already read two examples of Mrs. Adams' enthusiastic
outpourings in regard to Richmond Hill. She was, in fact, never tired
of writing of it. A favourite quotation of hers she always applied to
the place:
_"In this path,
How long soe'er the wanderer roves, each step
Shall wake fresh beauties; each last point present
A different picture, new, and each the same."_
That entire neighbourhood was rich in game,--we have already seen that
the Dutch farmers thought highly of the duck shooting near the Sand
Hill Road, and that Minetta Brook was a first-class fishing stream.
Birds of all sorts were plentiful, and the Adamses did their best to
preserve them on their own place. But too keen sportsmen were always
stealing into the Richmond Hill grounds for a shot or two. "Oh, for
game laws!" was her constant wail. In one letter she declares: "The
partridge, the woodcock and the pigeon are too great temptations for
the sportsman to withstand!"
And please don't forget for one moment that this was at Charlton and
Varick streets!
The House on the Hill was the home of quite ceremonious entertaining
in those days. John Adams, in another land, would surely have been a
courtier--a Cavalier rather than a Roundhead. John T. Morse, Jr., says
that the Vice-president liked "the trappings of authority." The same
historian declares that in his advice to President Washington, "... he
talked of dress and undress, of attendants, gentlemen-in-waiting,
chamberlains, etc., as if he were arranging the household of a
European monarch."
Gulian C. Verplanck (sometimes known by the nom de plume of "Francis
Herbert"), wrote in 1829, quite an interesting account of Richmond
Hill as he personally recalled it. He draws for us a graphic picture
of a dinner party given by the Vice-president and Mrs. Adams for
various illustrious guests.
After entering the house by a side door on the right, they mounted a
broad staircase with a heavy mahogany railing. Dinner was served in a
large room on the second floor with Venetian windows and a door
opening out onto the balcony under the portico. And then he gives us
these vivid little vignettes of those who sat at the great table:
In the centre sat "Vice-president Adams in full dress, with his bag
and _solitaire_, his hair frizzed out each side of his face as you see
it in Stuart's older pictures of him. On his right sat Baron Steuben,
our royalist republican disciplinarian general. On his left was Mr.
Jefferson, who had just returned from France, conspicuous in his red
waistcoat and breeches, the fashion of Versailles. Opposite sat Mrs.
Adams, with her cheerful, intelligent face. She was placed between the
Count du Moustier, the French Ambassador, in his red-healed shoes and
earrings, and the grave, polite, and formally bowing Mr. Van Birket,
the learned and able envoy of Holland. There, too, was Chancellor
Livingston, then still in the prime of life, so deaf as to make
conversation with him difficult, yet so overflowing with wit,
eloquence and information that while listening to him the difficulty
was forgotten. The rest were members of Congress, and of our
Legislature, some of them no inconsiderable men. Being able to talk
French, a rare accomplishment in America at that time, a place was
assigned to me next the count."
Verplanck goes on to describe the dinner. He says that it was a very
grand affair, bountiful and elaborately served, but the French
Ambassador would taste nothing. He took a spoonful or two of soup but
refused everything else "from the roast beef down to the lobsters."
Everyone was concerned, for that was a day of trenchermen, and only
serious illness kept people from eating their dinners. At last the
door opened and his own private _chef_,--quaintly described by
Verplanck as "his body-cook,"--rushed into the room pushing the
waiters right and left before him, and placed triumphantly upon the
table an immense pie of game and truffles, still hot from the oven.
This obviously had been planned as a pleasant surprise for the hosts.
Du Moustier took a small helping himself and divided the rest among
the others. The chronicler adds, "I can attest to the truth of the
story and the excellence of the _pate_!"
No one doubts the courteous intentions of the Count, but something
tells me that that excellent housewife and incomparable hostess,
Mistress Adams, was not enchanted by the unexpected addition to her
delicious and carefully planned menu!
It is Verplanck, by the bye, who has put in a peculiarly succinct way
one of the most signal characteristics of New York--its lightning-like
evolution.
"In this city especially," he says, "the progress of a few years
effect what in Europe is the work of centuries." A shrewd and happily
tongued observer, is Mr. Verplanck; we shall have occasion, I believe,
to refer to him again.
The Adams' occupancy of Richmond Hill House was, we must be convinced,
a very happy one. It was a house of a flexible and versatile
personality, a beautiful home, an important headquarters of many state
affairs, a brilliant social nucleus. Washington and his wife often
went there to call in their beloved post-chaise, and there was
certainly no dignitary of the time and the place who was not at one
time or another a guest there. In the course of time, the Adamses
went to a new and fine dwelling at Bush Hill on the Schuylkill. And
dear Mistress Abigail, faithful to the house of her heart, wrote
wistfully of her just-acquired home:
"It is a beautiful place, but the grand and sublime I left
at Richmond Hill" ...
In 1797, the house went to a rich foreigner named Temple. I quote the
chronicles of old New York, but can give you little information
concerning this gentleman. The only thing at all memorable or
interesting about him seems to have been the fact that he was robbed
of a large quantity of money and valuables while at the Hill, that the
thieves were never discovered and that for this reason at least he
filled the local press for quite a time. His occupancy seems to have
been short, and, save for the robbery, uneventful (if he really was a
picturesque and adventurous soul, I humbly ask pardon of his ghost,
but this is all I can find out about him!)--for it was in that
self-same year that the Burrs came to live at Richmond Hill, and
Temple passed into obscurity as far as New York history is concerned.
Mrs. Burr, that older Theodosia who was the idol of Aaron Burr's life,
had died three years before, and little Theo was now the head of his
household. Have you ever read the letters that passed between these
three, by the bye? They are so quaint, so human, so tender--I believe
that you will agree with me that such reading has more of charm in it
than the most dramatic modern novel. They bemoan their aches and pains
and cheer each other up as though they were all little Theo's age.
"Passed a most tedious night," writes Mrs. Burr, and adds that she has
bought a pound of green tea for two dollars! And--"Ten thousand loves.
_Toujours la votre_ Theodosia."
Burr writes that he has felt indisposed, but is better, thanks to a
draught "composed of laudanum, nitre and other savoury drugs." When
their letters do not arrive promptly they are in despair. "Stage after
stage without a line!" complains Theodosia the mother, in one
feverishly incoherent note. And Theodosia the daughter, even at nine
years old, had her part in this correspondence.
Her father writes her that from the writing on her last envelope, he
thought the letter must come from some "great fat fellow"! He advises
her to write a little smaller, and says he loves to hear from her.
Then he whimsically reproaches her for not saying a word about his
last letter to her, nor answering a single one of his questions:
"That is not kind--it is scarcely civil!"
When little Theodosia was eleven her mother died, and henceforward she
was her father's housekeeper and dearest companion. She is said to
have been beautiful, brilliant and fascinating even from her babyhood,
and certainly the way in which she took charge of Richmond Hill at the
age of fourteen would have done credit to a woman with at least
another decade to her credit.
Burr had a beautiful city house besides the one on the Hill, but he
and Theo both preferred the country place, and they entertained there
as lavishly as the Adamses before them. Burr had a special affection
for the French, and his house was always hospitably open to the
expatriated aristocrats during the French Revolution. Volney stopped
with him, and Talleyrand, and Louis Philippe himself. Among the
Americans his most constant guests were Dr. Hosack, the Clintons, and,
oddly enough, Alexander Hamilton! Hamilton, one imagines, found Burr
personally interesting, though he had small use for his politics, and
warned people against him as being that dangerous combination: a
daring and adventurous spirit, quite without conservative principles
or scruples.
Burr is described by one biographer as being "a well-dressed man,
polite and confident, with hair powdered and tied in a queue." He
stooped slightly, and did not move with the grace or ease one would
have expected from so experienced a soldier, but he had "great
authority of manner," and was uniformly "courtly, witty and charming."
During one of those legal battles in which he had only one rival
(Hamilton) it was reported of him that "Burr conducted the trial with
the dignity and impartiality of an angel but with the rigour of a
devil!"
Gen. Prosper M. Wetmore, who adores his memory and can find
extenuation for anything and everything he did, writes this charming
tribute:
"Born, as it seemed, to adorn society; rich in knowledge;
brilliant and instructive in conversation; gifted with a
charm of manner that was almost irresistible; he was the
idol of all who came within the magic sphere of his
friendship and his social influence."
His enthusiastic historians fail to add that, though he does not seem
to have been at all handsome, he was always profoundly fascinating to
women. It is doubtful (in spite of his second marriage at seventy odd)
if he ever loved anyone very deeply after his wife Theodosia's death,
but it is very certain indeed that a great, great many loved him!
Richmond Hill was the scene of one exceedingly quaint incident during
the very first year that Burr and his young daughter lived in it.
Burr was in Philadelphia on political business, and fourteen-year-old
Theo was in charge in the great house on the Hill a mile and a half
from New York. Imagine any modern father leaving his little girl
behind in a more or less remote country place with a small army of
servants under her and full and absolute authority over them and
herself! But I take it that there are not many modern little girls
like Theodosia Burr. Certainly there are very few who could translate
the American Constitution into French, and Theo did that while she was
still a slip of a girl, merely to please her adored father!
Which is a digression.
In some way Burr had made the acquaintance of the celebrated Indian
Chief of the Mohawks, Tha-yen-da-ne-gea. He was intelligent, educated
and really a distinguished orator, and Burr took a great fancy to him.
The Chief had adopted an American name,--Joseph Brant,--and had
acquired quite a reputation. He was en route for Washington, but
anxious to see New York before he went. So Burr sent him to Richmond
Hill, and gave him a letter to present to Theo, saying that his
daughter would take care of him!
The letter runs:
"... This will be handed to you by Colonel Brant, the
celebrated Indian Chief.... He is a man of education....
Receive him with respect and hospitality. He is not one of
those Indians who drink rum, but is quite a gentleman; not
one who will make you fine bows, but one who understands and
practises what belongs to propriety and good-breeding. He
has daughters--if you could think of some little present to
send to one of them (a pair of earrings for example) it
would please him...."
Even the prodigiously resourceful Theo was a bit taken aback by this
sudden proposition. In the highly cosmopolitan circle that she was
used to entertaining, she so far had encountered no savages, and, in
common with most young people, she thought of "Brant" as a fierce
barbarian who,--her father's letter notwithstanding,--probably carried
a tomahawk and would dance a war dance in the stately hallway of
Richmond Hill.
In her letter to her father, written after she had met Brant and made
him welcome, she admitted that she had been paramountly worried about
what she ought to give him to eat. She declared that her mind was
filled with wild ideas of (and she quotes):
_"'The Cannibals that each other eat,
The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders!'"_
She had, she confesses, a vague notion that all savages ate human
beings, and--though this obviously was intended as a touch of grisly
humour,--had half a notion to procure a human head and have it served
up in state after the mediaeval fashion of serving boars' heads in Old
England!
However, she presented him with a most up-to-date and epicurean
banquet, and had the wit and good taste to include in her dinner party
such representative men as Bishop Moore, Dr. Bard and her father's
good friend Dr. Hosack, the surgeon.
When the party was over she wrote Burr quite enthusiastically about
the Indian Chief, and declared him to have been "a most Christian and
civilised guest in his manners!"
There were no ladies at Theo's dinner party. She lived so much among
men, and so early learned to take her place as hostess and woman that
I imagine she would have had small patience with the patronage and
counsel of older members of her sex. That she was extravagantly
popular with men old and young is proved in many ways. Wherever she
went she was a belle. Whether the male beings she met chanced to be
young and stupid or old and wise, there was something for them to
admire in Theo, for she was both beautiful and witty, and she had
something of her father's "confidence of manner" which won adherents
right and left.
Mayor Livingston took her on board a frigate in the harbour one day,
and warned her to leave her usual retainers behind.
"Now, Theodosia," he admonished her with affectionate raillery, "you
must bring none of your _sparks_ on board! They have a magazine there,
and we should all be blown up!"
In 1801, when she was eighteen years old, the lovely Theo married
Joseph Alston, an immensely rich rice planter from South Carolina,
owner of more than a thousand slaves, and at one time governor of his
state. Though she went to the South to live, she never could bear to
sever entirely her relations with Richmond Hill. It is a curious fact
that everyone who ever lived there loved it best of all the places in
the world.
One year after her marriage Theo came on to New York for a visit--I
suppose she stopped at her father's town house, since it was in
spring, and before the country places would naturally be open. At all
events it was during this visit that, fresh from her rice fields
(which never agreed with her), she wrote in a letter:
"... I have just returned from a ride in the country and a
visit to Richmond Hill. Never did I behold this island so
beautiful. The variety of vivid greens, the finely
cultivated fields and gardens, the neat, cool air of the
cit's boxes peeping through straight rows of tall poplars,
and the elegance of some gentlemen's seats, commanding a
view of the majestic Hudson, and the high, dark shores of
New Jersey, altogether form a scene so lovely, so touching,
and to me so new, that I was in constant rapture."
In 1804 came the historic quarrel between Aaron Burr and Alexander
Hamilton. Since this chapter is the story of Richmond Hill and not the
life of Aaron Burr, I shall not concern myself with the whys or the
wherefores of that disastrous affair.
Histories must perforce deal with the political aims, successes and
failures of men; must cover a big canvas and sing a large and
impersonal song. But just here we have only to think of these old-time
phantoms of ours as they affect or are affected by the old-time
regions in which for the nonce we are interested. To Richmond
Hill--with its white columns and shadow-flinging portico, its gardens
and its oak trees and its silver pond--it was of small import that the
master just missed being President of the United States, that he did
become Vice-president, and President of the Senate, and that he was
probably as able a jurist as ever distinguished the Bar of New York;
also that he made almost as many enemies as he did friends. But it was
decidedly the concern of the sweet and imposing old house on Richmond
Hill that it was from its arms, so to speak, that he went out in a
cold, white rage to the duel with his chief enemy; that he returned,
broken and heartsick, doubly defeated in that he had chanced to be the
victor, to the protection of Richmond Hill.
I cannot help believing that the household gods of a man take a very
special interest and a very personal part in what fortunes befall him.
More than any deities of old, they live with and in him; they at once
go forth with him to battle, and welcome him home. I can conceive of
some hushed and gracious home-spirit walking restless by night
because the heart and head of the house was afar or in danger. And a
house so charged with personality as that on Richmond Hall must have
had many a ghost,--of fireside and of garden close,--who wept for
fallen fortunes as they had rejoiced for gaiety and bright enterprise.
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton were born antagonists: their
personalities, their ideals, their methods, were as diverse and as
implacably divergent as the poles. Hamilton, as a statesman, believed
that Burr was dangerous; and so he was: sky rockets and geniuses
usually are. Hamilton did his brilliant best to destroy the other's
power (it was chiefly due to his efforts that Burr missed the
Presidency), and, being a notably courageous man, he was not afraid to
go on warning America against him.
And so it all came about:--the exchange of letters--haughty,
courteously insolent, utterly unyielding on both sides--then the
challenge, and finally the duel.
I am glad to think that Theo Alston was safe among her husband's rice
fields at that time. She worshipped her father, and everything that
hurt him stabbed her to her devoted heart.
It was in an early, fragrant dawn--Friday the sixth of July,
1804--that Burr and his seconds left our beautiful Richmond Hill,
where the birds were singing and the pond just waking to the morning
light, for Weehawken Heights on the Jersey shore.
At about seven, Burr reached the ground which had been appointed. Just
after came Hamilton with his seconds, and the surgeon, Dr. Hosack. The
distance was punctiliously measured, and these directions read
solemnly to the principals:
"The parties, being placed at their stations, shall present and fire
when they please. If one fires before the other, the opposite second
shall say 1--2--3--fire; and he shall then fire or lose his fire."
Then came the word "Present!" from one of the witnesses. Both
duellists fired and Hamilton dropped. Burr was untouched. He stood for
a second looking at his fallen adversary, and then (as the story
goes), "with a gesture of profound regret, left the ground...."
Back to Richmond Hill and the troubled household gods. Burr was no
butcher, and he did not dislike Hamilton personally. I wonder how many
times he paced the cool dining-room with the balcony outside, and how
many times he refused meat or drink, before he despatched his note to
Dr. Hosack? Here it is:
"Mr. Burr's respectful compliments.--He requests Dr. Hosack
to inform him of the present state of General H., and of the
hopes which are entertained of his recovery.
"Mr. Burr begs to know at what hour of the day the Dr. may
most probably be found at home, that he may repeat his
enquiries. He would take it very kind if the Dr. would take
the trouble of calling on him, as he returns from Mr.
Bayard's."
On the thirteenth, the New York _Herald_ published:
"With emotions that we have not a hand to inscribe, have we
to announce the death of _Alexander Hamilton_.
"He was suddenly cut off in the forty-eighth year of his
age, in the full vigour of his faculties and in the midst of
all his usefulness."
The inquest which followed presented many and mixed views. Samuel
Lorenzo Knapp, writing in 1835, and evidently a somewhat prejudiced
friend, says that "the jury of inquest at last were reluctantly
dragooned into a return of murder."
Meanwhile, for eleven long black days, Burr stayed indoors at Richmond
Hill. He was afraid to go out, for he knew that popular feeling was,
in the main, against him. Dark times for the household gods! At last,
one starless, cloudy night, having heard of the murder verdict, he
stole away.
His faithful servant and friend, John Swartwout, went with him, and a
small barge lay waiting for him on the Hudson just below his Richmond
Hill estate, with a discreet crew. They rowed all night, and at
breakfast time, he turned up at the country place of Commodore
Truxton, at Perth Amboy.
Haggard and worn, he greeted his friend the Commodore with all his
usual _sang-froid_, and suggested nonchalantly that he had "spent the
night on the water, and a dish of coffee would not come amiss!"
He never went back to Richmond Hill to live again, though he later
returned to New York and dwelt there for many years. He went, for a
time, to Theo in the South, fearing arrest, but as a matter of fact,
verdict or no verdict, the matter of Hamilton's death was never
followed up. Burr came calmly back to the Capitol and finished his
term as Vice-president. In his farewell speech to the Senate he said
he did not remember the names of all the people who had slandered him
and intrigued against him, since "he thanked God he had no memory for
injuries!"
[Illustration: THE BUTTERICK BUILDING. A stone's throw from the site of
the once-glorious house of Richmond Hill.]
The year after the duel he evolved his monstrous and hare-brained plan
of establishing a Southern Republic with New Orleans as Capital and
himself as President. Mexico was in it too. In fact, President
Jefferson himself wrote of the project: "He wanted to overthrow
Congress, corrupt the navy, take the throne of Montezuma and seize New
Orleans.... It is the most extraordinary since the days of Don
Quixote!..."
General Wetmore loyally declares the scheme to have been "a
justifiable enterprise for the conquest of one of the provinces of
Southern America." But no one in the whole world really knows all
about it. The sum of the matter is that he was tried for treason, and
that, though he was acquitted, he was henceforward completely dead
politically. Through all, Theo stood by him, and her husband too. They
went to prison with him, and shared all his humiliation and
disappointment. Affection? Blind, confident adoration? Never was man
born who could win it more completely!
But America as a whole did not care for him any more. Dr. Hosack
loaned him money, and, after his acquittal, he set sail for England,
and let Richmond Hill be sold to John Jacob Astor by his creditors. It
brought only $25,000, which was a small sum compared to what he owed,
so he had another object in staying on the other side of the water: a
quite lively chance of the Debtors' Prison!
Apropos of this, there is one rather human little tale which is
comforting to read, dropped down, as it is, in the middle of so wildly
brilliant a career, so colossally disastrous a destiny.
While Burr was living at Richmond Hill, he was often obliged to take
coach journeys to outside points. One day he was on his way home from
Albany and stopped at a roadhouse at Kingston. While he was eating and
drinking and the horses were being changed, he saw a drawing which
interested him. He asked to see more by the same artist, for he had a
keen appreciation of skill in all lines.
This and the other sketches shown him were the work of a young fellow
called John Vanderlyn, who shortly was summoned to meet the great
Burr. The lad was apprenticed to a wagon-maker, and had absolutely no
prospects nor any hope of cultivating his undoubted talent. Like any
other boy young and poor and in a position so humble as to offer no
opportunity of improvement, he was even afraid of change, and seemed
unwilling to take the plunge of leaving his master and taking his
chance in the great world.
"Very well," said Burr. "When you change your mind, just put a clean
shirt in your pocket, come to New York and asked for Colonel Burr."
Then he dismissed the boy from his presence and the whole episode from
his mind, got into his coach and continued on his way.
Two months later he was at breakfast in the dining-room at Richmond
Hill,--with Theo probably pouring out his "dish of coffee,"--when a
vast disturbance arose downstairs. A roughly dressed lad had presented
himself at the front door and insisted on seeing Colonel Burr, in
spite of all the resistance of his manservant. At last he succeeded in
forcing his way past, and made his appearance in the breakfast-room,
followed by the startled and indignant servant. Burr did not recognise
him in the least, but the youth walked up to him, pulled a shirt--of
country make but quite clean--out of his coat pocket, and held it out.
Immediately it all came back to Burr, and he was delighted by the
simplicity with which the wagon-maker's apprentice had taken him at
his word. No one could play the benefactor more generously when he
chose, and he lost no time in sending Vanderlyn to Paris to study art.
So brilliantly did the young man acquit himself in the _ateliers_
there that within a very few years he was the most distinguished of
all American painters in Europe. In Henry Brevoort's Letters are
references to his commission to paint General Jackson, among others.
And now comes the pleasant part of this little story within a story:
In 1808, Aaron Burr was an exile in London. His trouble with Hamilton,
his mad scheme of empire and trial for treason, his political
unpopularity, had made him an outcast; and at that time, he, the most
fascinating, and at one time the most courted of men, lived and moved
without a friend. And he met Vanderlyn,--once the wistful lad who drew
pictures when his master wanted him to turn spokes. Now Vanderlyn was
a big man, with a name in the world and money in his pocket,
and--Aaron Burr's warm and grateful friend. Burr was living in
lodgings at eight shillings a week at that time, and his only caller
was John Vanderlyn.
In 1812 it seemed safe, even advisable, for the exile to return to
America again, but where was the money to be found? He was penniless.
Well, the money was found quite easily. Vanderlyn made a pile of all
his best canvases, sold them, and handed over the proceeds to his
friend and erstwhile benefactor. And so Burr came home to America.
I think the nicest part of all this is Vanderlyn's loyal silence about
the older man's affairs. It is likely that he knew more about Burr's
troubles and perplexities and mistakes than any other man, but he was
fiercely reticent on the subject. Once a writer approached Vanderlyn
for some special information. It was after Burr's death, and the
scribe had visions of publishing something illuminating about this
most mysterious and inscrutable genius.
"And now about Burr's private life," he insinuated confidentially.
The artist turned on him savagely.
"You let Burr's private life alone!" he snarled.
The author fled, deciding that he certainly would do just that!
Burr came home. But fate was not through with him yet. Dear Theo set
sail without delay, from South Carolina, to meet her father in New
York. He had been gone years, and she was hungry for the sight of him.
Her little son had died, and father and daughter longed to be together
again.
Her boat was the _Patriot_--and the _Patriot_ has never been heard from
since she put out. She was reported sunk off Cape Hatteras, but for many
years a haunting report persisted that she had been captured by the
pirates that then infested coastwise trade. So Theodosia--barely thirty
years old--vanished from the world so far as we may know. The dramatic
and tragic mystery of her death seems oddly in keeping with her life and
that of her father. Somehow one could scarcely imagine Theo growing old
peacefully on a Southern plantation!
Her father never regained his old eagerness for life after her loss.
He lived for years, practised law once more with distinction and
success on Nassau Street, even made a second marriage very late in
life, but I think some vivid, vital, romantic part of him, something
of ambition and fire and adventure, was lost at sea with his child
Theodosia.
And now shall we go back, for a few moments only, to Richmond Hill?
Counsellor Benson (or Benzon) is generally supposed to have been the
last true-blue celebrity to inhabit the famous old house. He was
Governor of the Danish Islands, and an eccentric. Our old friend
Verplanck says that he himself dined there once with thirteen others,
all speaking different languages.... "None of whom I ever saw before,"
he states, "but all pleasant fellows.... I, the only American, the
rest of every different nation in Europe and no one the same, and all
of us talking bad French together!"
It was soon after this that the city began cutting up old lots into
new, and turning what had been solitary country estates into
gregarious suburbs and, soon, metropolitan sections. Among other
strange performances, they levelled the hills of New York--is it not
odd to remember that there once were hills, many hills, in New York?
And right and left they did their commissioner-like best to cut the
town all to one pattern. Of course they couldn't, quite, but the
effort was of lasting and painfully efficacious effect. They could not
find it in their hearts, I suppose, to raze Richmond Hill House
completely,--it was a noble landmark, and a home of memories which
ought to have given even commissioners pause,--and maybe did. But they
began to lower it--yes: take it down literally. No one with an
imaginative soul can fail to feel that as they lowered the house in
site and situation so they gradually but relentlessly permitted it to
be lowered in character. It is with a distinct pang that I recall the
steps of Richmond Hill's decline: material and spiritual, its
two-sided fall appears to have kept step.
A sort of degeneracy struck the erstwhile lovely and exclusive old
neighbourhood. Such gay resorts as Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens had
encroached on the aristocratic regions of Lispenard's Meadows and
their vicinity. Brannan's Gardens were close to the present crossing
of Hudson and Spring streets. And--Richmond Hill did not escape! It
too became a tavern, a pleasure resort, a "mead garden," a
roadhouse--whatever you choose to call it. It, with its
contemporaries, was the goal of many a gay party and I am told that
its "turtle dinners" were incomparable! In winter there were sleighing
parties, a gentleman and lady in each sleigh; and--but here is a
better picture-maker than I to give it to you--one Thomas Janvier, in
short:
"How brave a sight it must have been when--the halt for
refreshments being ended--the long line of carriages got
under way again and went dashing along the causeway over
Lispenard's green meadows, while the silvered harness of the
horses and the brilliant varnish of the Italian chaises
gleamed and sparkled in the rays of nearly level sunshine
from the sun that was setting there a hundred years and more
ago!"
The secretary and engineer to the commissioners who cut up, levelled
and made over New York was John Randel, Jr., and he has left us most
minute and prolific writings, covering everything he saw in the
course of his work; indeed one wonders how he ever had time to work at
all at his profession! Among his records is this account of dear
Richmond Hill before it had been lowered to the level of the valley
lands. It was, in fact, the last of the hills to go.
After describing carefully the exact route he took daily to the
Commissioners' office in Greenwich, as far as Varick Street where the
excavations for St. John's Church were then being made (1808), and
stating that he crossed the ditch at Canal Street on a plank, he goes
on thus:
"From this crossing place I followed a well-beaten path
leading from the city to the then village of Greenwich,
passing over open and partly fenced lots and fields, not at
that time under cultivation, and remote from any
dwelling-house now remembered by me except Colonel Aaron
Burr's former country-seat, on elevated ground, called
Richmond Hill, which was about one hundred or one hundred
and fifty yards west of this path, and was then occupied as
a place of refreshment for gentlemen taking a drive from the
city."
In 1820, if I am not mistaken, the levelling (and lowering) process
was complete. Richmond Hill's sad old windows looked no longer down
upon a beautiful country world, but out on swiftly growing city
blocks. In 1831, a few art-loving souls tried to found a high-class
theatre in the old house,--the Richmond Hill Theatre. Among them was
Lorenzo Daponte, who had been exiled from Venice, and wrote witty
satirical verse.
The little group of sincere idealists wanted this theatre to be a real
home of high art, and a prize was offered for the best "poetical
address on the occasion,"--that is, the opening of the theatre. The
judges and contestants sat in one of the historic reception rooms that
had seen such august guests as Washington and Burr, Adams and
Hamilton, Talleyrand and Louis Philippe.
Our good friend General Wetmore can tell us of this at first hand for
he was one of those present.
"It was," he says, "an afternoon to be remembered. As the long
twilight deepened into evening, the shadows of departed hosts and
long-forgotten guests seemed to hover 'round the dilapidated halls and
the dismantled chambers."
The winner of the prize was Fitz-Greene Halleck; and it was not at all
a bad poem, though too long to quote here.
The theatre was never a brilliant success. To be sure, such sterling
actors as Mr. and Mrs. John Barnes and the Hilsons played there, and
during a short season of Italian opera, in which Daponte was
enthusiastically interested, Adelaide Pedrotti was the prima donna.
And one of New York's first "opera idols" sang there--Luciano
Fornasari, generally acclaimed by New York ladies as the handsomest
man who had ever been in the city! For a wonder, he wasn't a tenor,
only a basso, but they adored him just the same.
Somehow it grows hard to write of Richmond Hill--a hill no longer, but
a shabby playhouse, which was not even successful. The art-loving
impresarios spent the little money they had very speedily and there
was no more Richmond Hill Theatre.
Then a circus put up there--yes, a circus--in the same house which had
made even sensible Mrs. Adams dream dreams, and where Theo Burr had
entertained her Indian Chief! In 1842, it was the headquarters of a
menagerie, pure and simple.
In 1849--thank God--its nightmare of desecration was over. It was
pulled down, and they built red-brick houses on its grave and left its
ancient memories to sleep in peace.
"And thus" [Wetmore once again] "passed away the glories and
the shadows of Richmond Hill. All that remains of them are
a few fleeting memories and a page or two of history fast
fading into oblivion."
For once, I cannot quite agree with him--not when he says that. For
surely the home of so much romance and grandeur and charm and
importance must leave something behind it other than a few fleeting
memories and a page or two of history. Houses have ghosts as well as
people, and if ever there stood a house with a personality, that was
sweet, poignant and indestructible, it was the House on Richmond Hill.
I, who tell you this, am very sure. Have I not seen it sketched in
bright, shadowy lines upon the air above Charlton and Varick
streets,--its white columns shining through all the modern city murk?
Go there in the right mood and at the right moment, and you will see,
too.