wives of many of our most renowned revolutionary leaders were
surprisingly illiterate. Except the noble wife of John Adams, whose
letters form so agreeable an oasis in the published correspondence of
the time, it would be difficult to mention the name of one lady of the
revolutionary period who could have been a companion to the _mind_ of
a man of culture. Mrs. Burr, on the contrary, was the equal of her
husband in literary discernment, and his superior in moral judgment.
Her remarks, in her letters to her husband, upon the popular authors
of the day, Chesterfield, Rousseau, Voltaire, and others, show that
she could correct as well as sympathize with her husband's taste. She
relished all of Chesterfield except the "indulgence," which Burr
thought essential. She had a weakness for Rousseau, but was not
deluded by his sentimentality. She enjoyed Gibbon without stumbling at
his fifteenth and sixteenth-chapters. The home of Theodosia presents
to us a pleasing scene of virtuous industry. The master of the house,
always an indomitable worker, was in the full tide of a successful
career at the bar. His two step-sons were employed in his office, and
one of them frequently accompanied him in his journeys to distant
courts as clerk or amanuensis. No father could have been more generous
or more thoughtful than he was for these fatherless youths, and they
appeared to have cherished for him the liveliest affection. Mrs. Burr
shared in the labors of the office during the absence of her lord. All
the affairs of this happy family moved in harmony, for love presided
at their board, inspired their exertions, and made them one. One
circumstance alone interrupted their felicity, and that was the
frequent absence of Burr from home on business at country courts; but
even these journeys served to call forth from all the family the
warmest effusions of affection.
"What language can express the joy, the gratitude of Theodosia!"
writes Mrs. Burr to her absent husband, in the fifth year of their
marriage.
"Stage after stage without a line. Thy usual punctuality
gave room for every fear; various conjectures filled every
breast. One of our sons was to have departed to-day in quest
of the best of friends and fathers. This morning we waited
the stage with impatience. Shrouder went frequently before
it arrived; at length returned--_no letter_. We were struck
dumb with disappointment. Barton [eldest son] set out to
inquire who were the passengers; in a very few minutes
returned exulting--a packet worth the treasures of the
Universe. Joy brightened every face; all expressed their
past anxieties, their present happiness. To enjoy was the
first result. Each made choice of what they could best
relish. Porter, sweet wine, chocolate, and sweetmeats made
the most delightful repast that could be enjoyed without
thee. The servants were made to feel their lord was well;
are at this instant toasting his health and bounty. While
the boys are obeying thy dear commands, thy Theodosia flies
to speak her heartfelt joy--her Aaron safe--mistress of the
heart she adores, can she ask more? Has Heaven more to
grant?"
What a pleasing picture of a happy family circle is this, and how
rarely are the perils of a second marriage so completely overcome! It
was in such a warm and pleasant nest as this that Theodosia Burr
passed the years of her childhood.
Charles Lamb used to say that babies had no right to our regard merely
_as_ babies, but that every child had a character of its own by which
it must stand or fall in the esteem of disinterested observers.
Theodosia was a beautiful and forward child, formed to be the pet and
pride of a household. "Your dear little Theo," wrote her mother in her
third year, "grows the most engaging child you ever saw. It is
impossible to see her with indifference." From her earliest years she
exhibited that singular fondness for her father which afterward became
the ruling passion of her life, and which was to undergo the severest
tests that filial affection has ever known. When she was but three
years of age her mother would write: "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." And again:
"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 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."
Here was an inviting opportunity for developing an engaging infant
into that monstrous thing, a spoiled child. She was an only daughter
in a family of which all the members but herself were adults, and the
head of which was among the busiest of men.
But Aaron Burr, amidst all the toils of his profession, and in spite
of the distractions of political strife, made the education of his
daughter the darling object of his existence. Hunters tell us that
pointers and hounds _inherit_ the instinct which renders them such
valuable allies in the pursuit of game; so that the offspring of a
trained dog acquires the arts of the chase with very little
instruction. Burr's father was one of the most zealous and skillful of
schoolmasters, and from him he appears to have derived that pedagogic
cast of character which led him, all his life, to take so much
interest in the training of _protégés_. There was never a time in his
whole career when he had not some youth upon his hands to whose
education he was devoted. His system of training, with many excellent
points, was radically defective. Its defects are sufficiently
indicated when we say that It was pagan, not Christian. Plato,
Socrates, Cato, and Cicero might have pronounced it good and
sufficient: St. John, St. Augustine, and all the Christian host would
have lamented it as fatally defective. But if Burr educated his child
as though she were a Roman girl, her mother was with her during the
first eleven years of her life, to supply, in some degree, what was
wanting in the instructions of her father.
Burr was a stoic. He cultivated hardness. Fortitude and fidelity were
his favorite virtues. The seal which he used in his correspondence
with his intimate friends, and with them only, was descriptive of his
character and prophetic of his destiny. It was a Rock, solitary in the
midst of a tempestuous ocean, and bore the inscription, "_Nee flatu
nee fluctu_"--neither by wind nor by wave. It was his principle to
steel himself against the inevitable evils of life. If we were asked
to select from his writings the sentence which contains most of his
characteristic way of thinking, it would be one which he wrote in his
twenty-fourth year to his future wife: "That mind is truly great which
can bear with equanimity the trifling and unavoidable vexations of
life, and be affected only by those which determine our substantial
bliss." He utterly despised all complaining, even of the greatest
calamities. He even experienced a kind of proud pleasure in enduring
the fierce obloquy of his later years. One day, near the close of his
life, when a friend had told him of some new scandal respecting his
moral conduct, he said: "That's right, my child, tell me what they
say. I like to know what the public say of me,--the _great_ public!"
Such words he would utter without the slightest bitterness, speaking
of the _great_ public as a humorous old grandfather might of a
wayward, foolish, good little child.
So, at the dawn of a career which promised nothing but glory and
prosperity, surrounded by all the appliances of ease and pleasure, he
was solicitous to teach his child to do and to endure. He would have
her accustomed to sleep alone, and to go about the house in the dark.
Her breakfast was of bread and milk. He was resolute in exacting the
less agreeable tasks, such as arithmetic. He insisted upon regularity
of hours. Upon going away upon a journey he would leave written orders
for her tutors, detailing the employments of each day; and, during his
absence, a chief topic of his letters was the lessons of the children.
_Children_,--for, that his Theodosia might have the advantage of a
companion in her studies, he adopted the little Natalie, a French
child, whom he reared to womanhood in his house. "The letters of our
dear children," he would write,
"are a feast. To hear that they are employed, that no time
is absolutely wasted, is the most flattering of anything
that could be told me of them. It insures their affection,
or is the best evidence of it. It insures in its
consequences everything I am ambitious of in them. Endeavor
to preserve regularity of hours; it conduces exceedingly to
industry."
And his wife would answer:
"I really believe, my dear, that few parents can boast of
children whose minds are so prone to virtue. I see the
reward of our assiduity with inexpressible delight, with a
gratitude few experience. My Aaron, they have grateful
hearts."
Or thus: "Theo [seven years old] ciphers from five in the morning
until eight, and also the same hours in the evening. This prevents our
riding at those hours."
When Theodosia was ten years old, Mary Wollstonecraft's eloquent
little book, "A Vindication of the Eights of Woman," fell into Burr's
hands. He was so powerfully struck by it that he sat up nearly all
night reading it. He showed it to all his friends. "Is it owing to
ignorance or prejudice," he wrote, "that I have not yet met a single
person who had discovered, or would allow the merit of this work?" The
work, indeed, was fifty years in advance of the time; for it
anticipated all that is rational in the opinions respecting the
position and education of women which are now held by the ladies who
are stigmatized as the Strong-minded, as well as by John Mill, Herbert
Spencer, and other economists of the modern school. It demanded fair
play for the _understanding_ of women. It proclaimed the essential
equality of the sexes. It denounced the awful libertinism of that age,
and showed that the-weakness, the ignorance, the vanity, and the
seclusion of women prepared them to become the tool and minion of bad
men's lust. It criticised ably the educational system of Rousseau,
and, with still more severity, the popular works of bishops and
priests, who chiefly strove to inculcate an abject submission to man
as the rightful lord of the sex. It demonstrated that the sole
possibility of woman's elevation to the rank of man's equal and friend
was in the cultivation of her mind, and in the thoughtful discharge of
the duties of her lot. It is a really noble and brave little book,
undeserving of the oblivion into which it has fallen. No intelligent
woman, no wise parent with daughters to rear, could read it now
without pleasure and advantage.
"Meekness," she says,
"may excite tenderness, and gratify the arrogant pride of
man; but the lordly caresses of a protector will not gratify
a noble mind that pants and deserves to be _respected_.
Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship... A girl whose
spirits have not been damped by inactivity, or innocence
tainted by false shame, will always be a romp, and the doll
will never excite attention unless confinement allows her no
alternative Most of the women, in the circle of my
observation, who have acted like rational creatures, have
accidentally been allowed to run wild, as some of the
elegant formers of the fair sex would insinuate Men have
better tempers than women because they are occupied by
pursuits that interest the _head_ as well as the heart. I
never knew a weak or ignorant person who had a good temper
Why are girls to be told that they resemble angels, but to
sink them below women? They are told that they are only like
angels when they are young and beautiful; consequently it is
their persons, not their virtues, that procure them this
homage It is in vain to attempt to keep the heart pure
unless the head is furnished with ideas Would ye, O my
sisters, really possess modesty, ye must remember that the
possession of virtue, of any denomination, is incompatible
with ignorance and vanity! Ye must acquire that soberness of
mind which the exercise of duties and the pursuit of
knowledge alone inspire, or ye will still remain in a
doubtful, dependent situation, and only be, loved while ye
are fair! The downcast eye, the rosy blush, the retiring
grace, are all proper in their season; but modesty being the
child of reason cannot long exist with the sensibility that
is not tempered by reflection.... With what disgust have I
heard sensible women speak of the wearisome confinement
which they endured at school. Not allowed, perhaps, to step
out of one broad path in a superb garden, and obliged to
pace, with steady deportment, stupidly backward and forward,
holding up their heads and turning out their toes, with
shoulders braced back, instead of bounding forward, as
Nature directs to complete her own design, in the various
attitudes so conducive to health. The pure animal spirits,
which make both mind and body shoot out and unfold the
tender blossoms of hope, are turned sour and vented in vain
wishes or pert repinings, that contract the faculties and.
spoil the temper; else they mount to the brain, and,
sharpening the understanding before it gains proportionable
strength, produce that pitiful cunning which disgracefully
characterizes the female mind,--and, I fear, will ever
characterize it while women remain the slaves of power."
In the spirit of this book Theodosia's education was conducted. Her
mind had fair play. Her father took it for granted that she could
learn what a boy of the same age could learn, and gave her precisely
the advantages which he would have given a son. Besides the usual
accomplishments, French, music, dancing, and riding, she learned to
read Virgil, Horace, Terence, Lucian, Homer, in the original. She
appears to have read all of Terence and Lucian, a great part of
Horace, all the Iliad, and large portions of the Odyssey. "Cursed
effects," exclaimed her father once,
"of fashionable education, of which both sexes are the
advocates, and yours eminently the victims. If I could
foresee that Theo would become a mere fashionable woman,
with all the attendant frivolity and vacuity of mind,
adorned with whatever grace and allurement, I would
earnestly pray God to take her forthwith hence. But I yet
hope by her to convince the world what neither sex appears
to believe, that women have souls."
How faithfully, how skilfully he labored to kindle and nourish the
intelligence of his child his letters to her attest. He was never too
busy to spare a half-hour in answering her letters. In a country
court-room, in the Senate-chamber, he wrote her brief and sprightly
notes, correcting her spelling, complimenting her style, reproving her
indolence, praising her industry, commenting on her authors. Rigorous
taskmaster as he was, he had a strong sense of the value of just
commendation, and he continued to mingle praise very happily with
reproof. A few sentences from his letters to her will serve to show
his manner.
(In her tenth year.)--
"I rose up suddenly from the sofa, and rubbing my head,
'What book shall I buy for her?' said I to myself. 'She
reads so much and so rapidly that it is not easy to find
proper and amusing French books for her; and yet I am so
flattered with her progress in that language that I am
resolved she shall, at all events, be gratified. Indeed I
owe it to her.' So, after walking once or twice briskly
across the floor, I took my hat and sallied out, determined
not to return till I had purchased something. It was not my
first attempt. I went into one bookseller's shop after
another. I found plenty of fairy tales and such nonsense,
fit for the generality of children nine or ten years old.
'These,' said I, 'will never do. Her understanding begins to
be above such things'; but I could see nothing that I would
offer with pleasure to an _intelligent, well-informed_ girl
nine years old. I began to be discouraged. The hour of
dining was come. 'But I will search a little longer,' I
persevered. At last I found it. I found the very thing I
sought. It is contained in two volumes octavo, handsomely
bound, and with prints and registers. It is a work of fancy,
but replete with instruction and amusement. I must present
it with my own hand."
He advised her to keep a diary; and to give her an idea of what she
should record, he wrote for her such a journal of one day as he should
like to receive.
_Plan of the Journal_.--
"Learned 230 lines, which finished Horace. Heigh-ho for
Terence and the Greek Grammar to-morrow. Practised two hours
less thirty-five minutes, which I begged off. Hewlett
(dancing-master) did not come. Began Gibbon last evening. I
find he requires as much study and attention as Horace; so I
shall not rank the reading of _him_ among amusements. Skated
an hour; fell twenty times, and find the advantage of a hard
head. Ma better,--dined, with us at table, and is still
sitting up and free from pain."
She was remiss in keeping her journal; remiss, too, in writing to her
father, though he reminded her that he never let one of _her_ letters
remain unanswered a day. He reproved her sharply. "What!" said he,
"can neither affection nor civility induce you to devote to
me the small portion of time which I have required? Are
authority and compulsion then the only engines by which you
can be moved? For shame, Theo. Do not give me reason to
think so ill of you."
She reformed. In her twelfth year, her father wrote: "Io triumphe!
there is not a word misspelled either in your journal or letter, which
cannot be said of one you ever wrote before." And again:
"When you want punctuality in your letters, I am sure you
want it in everything; for you will constantly observe that
you have the most leisure when you do the most business.
Negligence of one's duty produces a self-dissatisfaction
which unfits the mind for everything, and _ennui_ and
peevishness are the never-failing consequence."
His letters abound in sound advice. There is scarcely a passage in
them which the most scrupulous and considerate parent could
disapprove. Theodosia heeded well his instructions. She became nearly
all that his heart or his pride desired.
During the later years of her childhood, her mother was grievously
afflicted with a cancer, which caused her death in 1794, before
Theodosia had completed her twelfth year. From that time, such was the
precocity of her character, that she became the mistress of her
father's house and the companion of his leisure hours. Continuing her
studies, however, we find her in her sixteenth year translating French
comedies, reading the Odyssey at the rate of two hundred lines a day,
and about to begin the Iliad. "The happiness of my life," writes her
father, "depends upon your exertions; for what else, for whom else, do
I live?" And, later, when all the world supposed that his whole soul
was absorbed in getting New York ready to vote for Jefferson and Burr,
he told her that the ideas of which _she_ was the subject that passed
daily through his mind would, if committed to writing, fill an octavo
volume.
Who so happy as Theodosia? Who so fortunate? The young ladies of New
York, at the close of the last century, might have been pardoned for
envying the lot of this favorite child of one who then seemed the
favorite child of fortune. Burr had been a Senator of the United
States as soon as he had attained the age demanded by the
Constitution. As a lawyer he was second in ability and success to no
man; in reputation, to none but Hamilton, whose services in the
Cabinet of General Washington had given him great celebrity. Aged
members of the New York bar remember that Burr alone was the
antagonist who could put Hamilton to his mettle. When other lawyers
were employed against him, Hamilton's manner was that of a man who
felt an easy superiority to the demands upon him; he took few notes;
he was playful and careless, relying much upon the powerful
declamation of his summing up. But when Burr was in the case,--Burr
the wary, the vigilant, who was never careless, never inattentive, who
came into court only after an absolutely exhaustive preparation of his
case, who held declamation in contempt, and knew how to quench its
effect by a stroke of polite satire, or the quiet citation of a
fact,--then Hamilton was obliged to have all his wits about him, and
he was observed to be restless, busy, and serious. There are now but
two or three venerable men among us who remember the keen encounters
of these two distinguished lawyers. The vividness of their
recollection of those scenes of sixty years ago shows what an
impression must have been made upon their youthful minds.
If Hamilton and Burr divided equally between them the honors of the
bar, Burr had the additional distinction of being a leader of the
rising Democratic Party; the party to which, at that day, the youth,
the genius, the sentiment, of the country were powerfully drawn; the
party which, by his masterly tactics, was about to place Mr. Jefferson
in the Presidential chair after ten years of ineffectual struggle.
All this enhanced the _éclat_ of Theodosia's position. As she rode
about the island on her pony, followed at a respectful distance, as
the custom then was, by one of her father's slaves mounted on a
coach-horse, doubtless many a fair damsel of the city repined at her
own homelier lot, while she dwelt upon the many advantages which
nature and circumstances had bestowed upon this gifted and happy
maiden.
She was a beautiful girl. She inherited all her father's refined
beauty of countenance; also his shortness of stature; the dignity,
grace, and repose of his incomparable manner, too. She was a plump,
petite, and rosy girl; but there was that in her demeanor which became
the daughter of an affluent home, and a certain assured, indescribable
expression of face which seemed to say, Here is a maiden who to the
object of her affection could be faithful against an execrating
world,--faithful even unto death.
Burr maintained at that time two establishments, one in the city, the
other a mile and a half out of town on the banks of the Hudson.
Richmond Hill was the name of his country seat, where Theodosia
resided during the later years of her youth. It was a large, massive,
wooden edifice, with a lofty portico of Ionic columns, and stood on a
hill facing the river, in the midst of a lawn adorned with ancient
trees and trained shrubbery. The grounds, which extended to the
water's edge, comprised about a hundred and sixty acres. Those who now
visit the site of Burr's abode, at the corner of Charlton and Varick
streets, behold a wilderness of very ordinary houses covering a dead
level. The hill has been pared away, the ponds filled up, the river
pushed away a long distance from the ancient shore, and every one of
the venerable trees is gone. The city shows no spot less suggestive of
rural beauty. But Richmond Hill, in the days of Hamilton and Burr, was
the finest country residence on the island of Manhattan. The wife of
John Adams, who lived there in 1790, just before Burr bought it, and
who had recently travelled in the loveliest counties of England,
speaks of it as a situation not inferior in natural beauty to the most
delicious spot she ever saw. "The house," she says,
"is situated upon an eminence; at an agreeable distance
flows the noble Hudson, bearing upon its bosom the fruitful
productions of the adjacent country. On 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. The venerable oaks and
broken ground, covered with wild shrubs, which surround me,
give 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; for I
have, as much as possible, prohibited the grounds from
invasion, and sometimes almost wished for game-laws, when my
orders have not been sufficiently regarded. The partridge,
the woodcock, and the pigeon are too great temptations to
the sports-men to withstand."
Indeed the whole Island was enchanting in those early days. There were
pleasant gardens even in Wall Street, Cedar Street, Nassau Street; and
the Battery, the place of universal resort, was one of the most
delightful public grounds in the world,--as it will be again when the
Spoiler is thrust from the places of power, and the citizens of New
York come again into the ownership of their city. The banks of the
Hudson and of the East River were forest-crowned bluffs, lofty and
picturesque, and on every favorable site stood a cottage or a mansion
surrounded with pleasant grounds. The letters of Theodosia Burr
contain many passages expressive of her intense enjoyment of the
variety, the vivid verdure, the noble trees, the heights, the pretty
lakes, the enchanting prospects, the beautiful gardens, which her
daily rides brought to her view. She was a dear lover of her island
home. The city had not then laid waste the beauty of Manhattan. There
was only one bank in New York, the officers of which shut the bank at
one o'clock and went home to dinner, returned at three, and kept the
bank open till five. Much of the business life of the town partook of
this homely, comfortable, easy-going, rural spirit. There was a mail
twice a week to the North, and twice a week to the South, and many of
the old-fashioned people had time to live.