Aaron Burr was past-master of what Whistler calls "the gentle art of
making enemies!" Probably no man ever lived who was more bitterly
hated or more fiercely reviled. Even at this day, when he has been
dead more than half a century, his memory is still assailed.
It is the popular impression that he was a villain. Perhaps he was,
since "where there is smoke, there must be fire," but happily we have
no concern with the political part of his life. Whatever he may have
been, and whatever dark deeds he may have done, there still remains a
redeeming feature which no one has denied him--his love for his
daughter, Theodosia.
One must remember that before Burr was two years old, his father,
mother, and grandparents were all dead. He was reared by an uncle,
Timothy Edwards, who doubtless did his best, but the odds were against
the homeless child. Neither must we forget that he fought in the
Revolution, bravely and well.
From his early years he was very attractive to women. He was handsome,
distinguished, well dressed, and gifted in many ways. He was generous,
ready at compliments and gallantry, and possessed an all-compelling
charm.
In the autumn of 1777, his regiment was detailed for scouting duty in
New Jersey, which was then the debatable ground between colonial and
British armies. In January of 1779, Colonel Burr was given command of
the "lines" in Westchester County, New York. It was at this time that
he first met Mrs. Prevost, the widow of a British officer. She lived
across the Hudson, some fifteen miles from shore, and the river was
patrolled by the gunboats of the British, and the land by their
sentries.
In spite of these difficulties, however, Burr managed to make two
calls upon the lady, although they were both necessarily informal. He
sent six of his trusted soldiers to a place on the Hudson, where there
was an overhanging bank under which they moored a large boat, well
supplied with blankets and buffalo robes. At nine o'clock in the
evening he left White Plains on the smallest and swiftest horse he
could procure, and when he reached the rendezvous, the horse was
quickly bound and laid in the boat. Burr and the six troopers stepped
in, and in half an hour they were across the ferry. The horse was
lifted out, and unbound, and with a little rubbing he was again ready
for duty.
Before midnight, Burr was at the house of his beloved, and at four in
the morning he came back to the troopers awaiting him on the river
bank, and the return trip was made in the same manner.
For a year and a half after leaving the army, Burr was an invalid, but
in July, 1782, he married Mrs. Prevost. She was a widow with two
sons, and was ten years older than her husband. Her health was
delicate and she had a scar on her forehead, but her mind was finely
cultivated and her manners charming.
Long after her death he said that if his manners were more graceful
than those of some men, it was due to her influence, and that his wife
was the truest woman, and most charming lady he had ever known.
It has been claimed by some that Burr's married life was not a happy
one, but there are many letters still extant which passed between them
which seemed to prove the contrary. Before marriage he did not often
write to her, but during his absences afterward, the fondest wife
could have no reason to complain.
For instance:
"This morning came your truly welcome letter of Monday
evening," he wrote her at one time. "Where did it loiter so
long?
"Nothing in my absence is so flattering to me as your health
and cheerfulness. I then contemplate nothing so eagerly as
my return, amuse myself with ideas of my own happiness, and
dwell upon the sweet domestic joys which I fancy prepared
for me.
"Nothing is so unfriendly to every species of enjoyment as
melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is
incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the
mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe
of sentiment and love."
He always wrote fondly of the children:
"My love to the smiling little girl," he said in one letter.
"I continually plan my return with childish impatience, and
fancy a thousand incidents which are most interesting."
After five years of married life the wife wrote him as follows:
"Your letters always afford me a singular satisfaction, a
sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It
wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was
replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection.
I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and
mingle it with common ideas."
Soon after Burr entered politics, his wife developed cancer of the
most virulent character. Everything that money or available skill
could accomplish was done for her, but she died after a lingering and
painful illness, in the spring of 1794.
They had lived together happily for twelve years, and he grieved for
her deeply and sincerely. Yet the greatest and most absorbing passion
of his life was for his daughter, Theodosia, who was named for her
mother and was born in the first year of their marriage. When little
Theodosia was first laid in her father's arms, all that was best in
him answered to her mute plea for his affection, and later, all that
was best in him responded to her baby smile.
Between those two, there was ever the fullest confidence, never
tarnished by doubt or mistrust, and when all the world forsook him,
Theodosia, grown to womanhood, stood proudly by her father's side and
shared his blame as if it had been the highest honour.
When she was a year or two old, they moved to a large house at the
corner of Cedar and Nassau Streets, in New York City. A large garden
surrounded it and there were grapevines in the rear. Here the child
grew strong and healthy, and laid the foundations of her girlish
beauty and mature charm. When she was but three years old her mother
wrote to the father, saying:
"Your dear little 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 the mention of you in her presence. She was one whole
day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment
is not of a common nature."
And again:
"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."
The child was educated as if she had been a boy. She learned to
read Latin and Greek fluently, and the accomplishments of her time
were not neglected. When she was at school, the father wrote her
regularly, and did not allow one of her letters to wait a day for
its affectionate answer. He corrected her spelling and her grammar,
instilled sound truths into her mind, and formed her habits. From this
plastic clay, with inexpressible love and patient toil, he shaped his
ideal woman.
She grew into a beautiful girl. Her features were much like her
father's. She was petite, graceful, plump, rosy, dignified, and
gracious. In her manner, there was a calm assurance--the air of
mastery over all situations--which she doubtless inherited from him.
When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of
South Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she
went there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson's
Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he
returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house
as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. "Dreary, solitary,
comfortless--it was no longer home."
After her mother's death, Theodosia had been the lady of his household
and reigned at the head of his table. When he went back there was no
loved face opposite him, and the chill and loneliness struck him to
the heart.
For three years after her marriage, Theodosia was blissfully
happy. A boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston.
The Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake
unreservedly into his heart. "If I can see without prejudice," he
said, "there never was a finer boy."
His last act before fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to
his daughter--a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what
was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging
him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy
always, and to encourage her in those habits of study which he
himself had taught her.
She had parted from him with no other pain in her heart than the
approaching separation. When they met again, he was a fugitive from
justice, travel-stained from his long journey in an open canoe,
indicted for murder in New York, and in New Jersey, although still
President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States.
The girl's heart ached bitterly, yet no word of censure escaped her
lips, and she still held her head high. When his Mexican scheme was
overthrown, Theodosia sat beside him at his trial, wearing her
absolute faith, so that all the world might see.
When he was preparing for his flight to Europe, Theodosia was in New
York, and they met by night, secretly, at the house of friends. Just
before he sailed, they spent a whole night together, making the best
of the little time that remained to them before the inevitable
separation. Early in June they parted, little dreaming that they
should see each other no more.
During the years of exile, Theodosia suffered no less than he. Mr.
Alston had lost his faith in Aaron Burr, and the woman's heart
strained beneath the burden. Her health failed, her friends shrank
from her, yet openly and bravely she clung to her father.
Public opinion showed no signs of relenting, and his evil genius
followed him across the sea. He was expelled from England, and in
Paris he was almost a prisoner. At one time he was obliged to live
upon potatoes and dry bread, and his devoted daughter could not help
him.
He was despised by his countrymen, but Theodosia's adoring love never
faltered. In one of her letters she said:
"I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at
every misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject,
you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other men--I
contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility,
admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that a very little
superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a
superior being, such enthusiasm does your character excite
in me.
"When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant do my
best qualities appear! My own vanity would be greater if I
had not been placed so near you, and yet, my pride is in our
relationship. I had rather not live than not to be the
daughter of such a man."
She wrote to Mrs. Madison and asked her to intercede with the
President for her father. The answer gave the required assurance, and
she wrote to her father, urging him to go boldly to New York and
resume the practice of his profession. "If worse comes to worst," she
wrote, "I will leave everything to suffer with you."
He landed in Boston and went on to New York in May of 1812, where his
reception was better than he had hoped, and where he soon had a
lucrative practice. They planned for him to come South in the summer,
and she was almost happy again, when her child died and her mother's
heart was broken.
She had borne much, and she never recovered from that last blow. Her
health failed rapidly, and though she was too weak to undertake the
trip, she insisted upon going to New York to see her father.
Thinking the voyage might prove beneficial, her husband reluctantly
consented, and passage was engaged for her on a pilot-boat that had
been out privateering, and had stopped for supplies before going on to
New York.
The vessel sailed--and a storm swept the Atlantic coast from Maine to
Florida. It was supposed that the ship went down off Cape Hatteras,
but forty years afterward, a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on
his death-bed that he was one of a crew of mutineers who took
possession of the _Patriot_ and forced the passengers, as well as the
officers and men, to walk the plank. He professed to remember Mrs.
Alston well, and said she was the last one who perished. He never
forgot her look of despair as she stepped into the sea--with her head
held high even in the face of death.
Among Theodosia's papers was found a letter addressed to her husband,
written at a time when she was weary of the struggle. On the envelope
was written: "My Husband. To be delivered after my death. I wish this
to be read immediately and before my burial."
He never saw the letter, for he never had the courage to go through
her papers, and after his death it was sent to her father. It came to
him like a message from the grave:
"Let my father see my son, sometimes," she had written. "Do
not be unkind to him whom I have loved so much, I beseech of
you. Burn all my papers except my father's letters, which I
beg you to return to him."
A long time afterward, her father married Madame Jumel, a rich New
York woman who was many years his junior, but the alliance was
unfortunate, and was soon annulled. Through all the rest of his life,
he never wholly gave up the hope that Theodosia might return. He clung
fondly to the belief that she had been picked up by another ship, and
some day would be brought back to him.
Day by day, he haunted the Battery, anxiously searching the faces of
the incoming passengers, asking some of them for tidings of his
daughter, and always believing that the next ship would bring her
back.
He became a familiar figure, for he was almost always there--a bent,
shrunken little man, white-haired, leaning heavily upon his cane,
asking questions in a thin piping voice, and straining his dim eyes
forever toward the unsounded waters, from whence the idol of his heart
never came.
For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
And I--I hear the sea-voice calling me.