SIX months creep by; May is painting Manhattan with its flowers. The
house of the stubborn, loyal Swartwout is in Stone Street. Long ago,
in the old Dutch beaver-peltry days, the home of the poet Steen-dam was
there. Now it is the dwelling place of John Swartwout, and Aaron is his
guest.
The lustrous Theo is with Aaron this sunny afternoon, luster something
dimmed; for the hour is one sad and tearful with parting. It is a last
parting; though the pair--the loving father! the adoring, clinging
daughter!--hopefully, happily blind, believe otherwise.
“Yes,” Aaron is saying, “I must sail tonight. The ship is at anchor in
the lower bay.” Theo, the lustrous, is too bravely the child of Aaron
to break into lamentation, though the wrung heart fills her eyes with
tears. “And should your plans fail,” she says, “you will come to us at
the ‘Oaks.’ Joseph, you know, is no longer ‘Mr. Alston,’ but ‘Governor
Alston.’ As father to the Governor of the State, and with your own high
name, you may take what place you will in South Carolina. You promise,
do you not? If by any trip of fortune your prospects are overthrown, you
will come to us in the South?”
“But, dearling, my plans will not fail. I have had letters from Lords
Mulgrave and Castlereagh, I bear with me the indorsement of the British
Minister in Washington. Openly or secretly, England will support my
project with men and money and ships. If, in some caprice of politics or
a changing cabinet, she should refuse, I shall seek Napoleon. Mexico and
an empire!--that should match finely the native color of his Corsican
feeling.”
Night draws on; Aaron and the lustrous Theo say the sorrowful words of
separation, and within the hour he is aboard the _Clarissa_, outward
bound for England.
In London, full of new fire, Aaron throws away no time. Each day he
is closeted with Mulgrave, Castlereagh and Canning. He goes to Holland
House, and its noble master is seized with the fever for Montezuman
conquest. The inventive Earl of Bridgewater--who is radical and goes
readily to novel enterprises--catches the Mexican fury. The spirit of
Cortez is abroad; the nobility of England fall quickly in with Aaron’s
Western design. It will mean an augmentation of the world’s peerage.
Also, Mexico should furnish an admirable grazing ground for second sons.
Aaron’s affairs go swimmingly; he is full of hopeful anticipation. He
writes the lustrous Theo at the “Oaks” that, “save for the unforeseen,”
little Aaron Burr Alston shall yet wear an imperial crown as Aaron II.
Save for the unforeseen! The reservation is well put in. As Aaron sits
in conference, one foggy London evening, with Mulgrave and Castlereagh,
who have become principal figures in those Mexican designs, Canning
comes hurriedly in.
“I am from the Foreign Office,” says he, “and I come with bad news.
There is a lion in our path--two lions. Secret news was just received
that Napoleon has driven the king and queen from Madrid, and established
his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. Mexico by that: stroke belongs
to the Bonapartes; they will hardly consent to its loss.”
“That is one lion,” observes Mulgrave; “now for the other.”
“The other is England,” proceeds Canning. “Already we are mustering our
forces, and enlisting ships, to drive the Corsican out of Spain. We are
to become the allies of the royal outcasts, and restore them to Spanish
power. I need not draw the inference. As Spain’s ally, fighting her
battles against the French in the Peninsula, England will no more permit
the loss of Mexico than will Napoleon.”
Aaron listens; a chill of disappointment touches his strong heart.
He understands how wholly lost are his hopes, even before Canning is
through talking. He had two strings to his bow; both have snapped. No
chance now of either France or England aiding him. His prospects, so
bright but the moment before, are on the instant darkened.
“Delay! always delay!” he murmurs. Then his courage mounts again; the
chill is driven from his heart. He is too thoroughbred to despond, and
quickly pulls himself together. “Yes,” says he, “the word you bring
shuts double doors against us. The best we may do is wait--wait for
Napoleon to win or lose in Spain. Should England hurl him back across
the Pyrenees, we may resume our plans again.”
“Indubitably,” returns Canning. “Should England save Spain from the
Corsican, she might well lay claim to the right of disposing of Mexico
as a recompense for her exertions.”
Thus, for the time, by force of events in far-off Spain, is Aaron
compelled to fold away his ambitions.
While waiting the turn of fortune’s wheel in Spain, Aaron fills in his
leisure with society. Everywhere he is the lion. “The celebrated Colonel
Burr!” is the phrase by which he is presented. Entertained as well as
instructed by what he sees and hears, he begins to keep a journal. It
shall one day be read with interest by the lustrous Theo, he thinks.
Jeremy Bentham--honest, fussy, sprightly, full of dreams for bettering
governments--finds out Aaron. The honest, fussy Bentham loves admiration
and the folk who furnish it. He has heard from letter-writing friends
in America that “the celebrated Colonel Burr” reads his works with
satisfaction. That is enough for honest, fussy, praise-loving Bentham,
and he drags Aaron off to live with him at Barrow Green.
“You,” cries the delighted Bentham, when he has the “celebrated Colonel
Burr” as a member of his family--“you and Albert Gallatin are the
only two in the United States who appreciate my ideas. For the common
mind--which is as dull and crawling as a tortoise--my theories travel
too fast.”
Aaron lives with Bentham--fussy, kindly, pragmatical Bentham--now at
Barrow Green, now at the philosopher’s London house in Queen Square
Place. From this latter high vantage he sallies forth and meets William
Godwin; and Godwin, and Mary Wollstonecraft, carry him off to tea with
Charles and Mary Lamb. He writes in his journal:
“Go with the Godwins to Mr. Lamb’s. He is a writer, and lives with a
maiden sister, also literary, up four pairs of stairs.”
At the Lambs he encounters Faseli the painter; and thereupon Aaron,
the Godwins, Faseli, and the Lambs brew a bowl of punch, and thresh out
questions social, artistic, literary, and political until the hours grow
small.
Cobbett talks with Aaron; and straight off runs to Bentham with the
suggestion that they send him to Parliament. Aaron laughs.
“I’m afraid,” says he, “that whatever may be my genius for law-giving,
it would fit but badly with English prejudice and English inclination.
You would find me in the British Commons but a sorry case of a square
peg in a round hole.”
That Aaron is the fashion at Holland House, which is the gathering point
of opposition to Government, does not help him at the Home Office. Also,
the Spanish allies of England, through their minister, complain.
“He is fomenting his Mexican design,” cries the Spaniard. “It shows but
poorly for England’s friendship that she harbors him, and that he is
feted and feasted by her nobility.”
Lord Hawkesbury leans to the Spanish view. He will assert his powers
under the “Alien Act.” It will please the Spaniards. Likewise, it will
offend Holland House. Two birds; one stone. Hawkesbury sends a request
that Aaron call upon him at his office; and Aaron calls.
“This, you will understand,” observes Hawkesbury, “is not a personal
but an official interview, Colonel Burr. I might hope to make it more
pleasant were it personal. Speaking as one of the crown’s secretaries, I
must notify you to quit England.”
“What is your authority for this?” asks Aaron.
“You will find it in the ‘Alien Act.’ Under that statute, Government
is invested with power to order the departure of any alien without
assigning cause.”
“Precisely! Your Government is now engaged in searching American ships
for English sailors. It was, I recall, the basis of bitter complaint in
America when I left. In seizing those whom you call English sailors and
subjects, you refuse to recognize their naturalization as citizens of
America. Do I state the fact?”
“Assuredly! No Englishman has a right to shift his allegiance from his
king. That is British doctrine. Once a subject, always a subject.”
“The very point!” returns Aaron. “Once a subject, always a subject. I
suppose you will not deny that I was in 1756 born in New Jersey, then a
province of England. I was born a British subject, was I not?”
“There is no doubt of that.”
“Then, sir, being born a British subject, under your doctrine of ‘Once a
subject, always a subject,’ I am still a British subject. Therefore,
I am no alien. Therefore, I do not fall within the description of your
‘Alien Act.’ You can hardly order me to quit England as an alien at the
very moment when you say I am a British subject. My lord”--this with a
smile like a warning--“the story, if told in the papers, would get your
lordship laughed at.”
Hawkesbury falls back baffled. He keeps his face, however, and tells
Aaron the matter may rest until he further considers it.
Aaron visits Oxford, and is wined and dined by the grave college heads.
He talks Bentham and religion to his hosts, and they fall to amiable
disagreement with him.
“We then,” he writes in his journal, “got upon American politics and
geography, upon which subjects a most profound and learned ignorance was
displayed.”
Birmingham entertains Aaron; Stratford makes him welcome. He travels
to Edinburgh, and is the victim of parties, dinners, balls, sermons,
assemblies, plays, lectures, and other Scottish dissipations. The bench
and bar cannot get too much of him. Mackenzie, who wrote the “Man
of Feeling,” and Walter Scott, who is in the “Marmion” stage of his
development, seek his acquaintance. Aaron sees a deal of these lettered
ones, and sets down in his diary that:
“Mackenzie has twelve children; six of them daughters, all interesting,
and two handsome. He is sprightly, amiable, witty. Scott, with less
softness, has more animation--talks much and is very agreeable.”
Aaron stays a month with his Scotch friends, and returns to London. He
resumes the old round of club and drawing-room, with Holland, Melville,
Mulgrave, Castlereagh, Canning, Bentham, Cobbett, Godwin, Lamb, Faseli,
and others political, philosophical, social, literary, and artistic.
One day as he returns from breakfast at Holland House, he finds a note
on his table. It is from Lord Liverpool. The note is polite, bland,
insinuating, flattering. It says, none the less, that “The presence
of Colonel Burr in Great Britain is embarrassing to His Majesty’s
Government, and it is the wish and expectation of Government that he
remove.”
The note continues to the courteous effect that “passports will be
furnished Colonel Burr,” and a free passage in an English ship to any
port--not English.
Aaron replies to Lord Liverpool’s note, and says that having become, as
his Lordship declares, “embarrassing to His Majesty’s Government,” he
must, of course, as a gentleman “gratify the wishes of Government by
withdrawing.” He adds that Sweden, now he may no longer stay in England,
is his preference.
Aaron goes to Stockholm, and has trouble with the language but none with
the inhabitants, who receive him with open hearts and arms. At once he
is called upon to play the distinguished guest in highest circles, and
does it with usual easy grace. He spends three months in Stockholm, and
two in traveling about the kingdom. The excellence of the roads and the
lack of toll-gates amaze him. Likewise, he is in rapture over Swedish
honesty. He makes an admiring dash at the laws of the realm, and spreads
on his journal:
“There is no country in which personal liberty is so well secured; none
in which the violation of it is punished with so much certainty and
promptitude; none in which justice is administered with so much dispatch
and so little expense.”
Aaron attends the opera, and cannot say too much in praise of the
Swedish appreciation of music. He exalts the sensibility of the
Norsemen. Returning from the opera, he lights his candle and writes:
“What most interested me was the perfect attention and the uncommon
degree of feeling exhibited by the audience. Every countenance was
affected by those emotions which the music expressed. In England you
see no expression painted on the faces at a concert or an opera. All
is somber and grim. They cry ‘Bravo! bravissimo!’ with the same
countenance wherewith they curse.”
From Sweden Aaron repairs to Denmark, and takes up pleasant quarters in
Copenhagen. Here he goes in for science, ransacks libraries, and attends
the courts. Studying the Danish jurisprudence, he is struck by that
amiable feature called the “Committees on Conciliation,” and resolves to
recommend its adoption in America.
Hamburg next. Here Aaron asks for passports into France. They are not
immediately forthcoming, since under the Corsican passports are more
easily asked for than obtained. While his passports are making, Aaron
is visited by the learned Ebeling, and Niebuhr, privy counselor to the
king.
Aaron takes six weeks and explores Germany.
He sees Hanover, Brunswick, Gottingen, Gotha, Weimar. At Weimar, Goethe
brings him to his house, where he meets “the amiable, good Wieland,”
and is dragged off by Goethe to the theater, and sits through a “serious
comedy” with the Baroness de Stein. He is presented at court, and is
welcomed by the grand duke--Goethe’s duke--and the grand duchess. Here,
too, he falls temporarily in love with the noble d’Or, a beautiful lady
of the ducal court. His love begins to alarm him; he fears he may wed
the d’Or, remain in Weimar, and “lapse into a Dutchman.” To avoid this
fate, he beats a hasty retreat to Erfurth. Being safe, he cheers his
spirits by writing:
“Another interview, and I would have been lost! The danger was so
imminent, and the d’Or so beautiful, that I ordered post horses, gave a
crown extra to the postilions to whip like the devil, and lo! here I am
in a warm room, with a neat, good bed, safe locked within four Erfurth
walls, rejoicing and repining.”
As Aaron writes this, he lays aside his “repining” for the lovely
d’Or, and so far emerges from his gloom as to “draw a dirk,” and put to
thick-soled clattering flight one of the local police, who invades
his room with the purpose of putting out the candle. Erfurth being a
garrison town, lights are ordered “out” at nine o’clock. As a mark of
respect to his dirk, however, Aaron’s candles are permitted to gutter
and sputter unrebuked until long after midnight.