The American Chronicle 1 - Burr Read Online Free PDF Page A

trusts Van Buren. I don’t. I like Johnson. He doesn’t.”
    I have never seen Leggett so worked up. Eyes glassy with excitement; cheeks a dull red. A moment of silence, broken finally by a clam-seller singing his wares below in Pine Street:
     
    “Here’s your fine clams
    As white as snow
    On Rockaway these clams do grow!”
     
    (I record all the songs I hear—for a possible article.)
    I was tentative. “First, I don’t think Colonel Burr is apt to tell me the truth ...”
    “You see him every day. He’s fond of you.”
    “My father was a friend of his but that’s hardly ...”
    “Burr’s old. He lives in the past.”
    “In the past ?At this very moment he’s planning to settle Texas with Germans.”
    “Good God!” Leggett was impressed. “Anyway, you’re the only one in a position to find out. And didn’t you tell me he was writing the story of his life?”
    “So he says. But I doubt it. Occasionally he speaks of dictating to me but ...”
    “So encourage him! Get him to talk about old times, about Kinderhook, about the days when he was in the Assembly and impregnating Mrs. Van Buren ...”
    “I’m afraid he’s more interested in telling the ‘true’ story of the Revolution.”
    “Have you no guile?”
    “You don’t know Colonel Burr. And even if I did get the truth from him—which is doubtful—he can always prevent me from using it. He’s the best lawyer in the state, and there is such a thing as libel.”
    Leggett was brisk. “We have three years before the next elections. He’s bound to be dead by then, and under New York law you cannot libel the dead.”
    “What about Van Buren?”
    “It is not libel to prove that a man is a bastard.” Leggett was on his feet. “Charlie, we may have found a way to keep Matty Van out of the White House, and democratic principles in.”
    I rose, too. “The Evening Post will print the story?”
    Leggett laughed and coughed simultaneously. “Certainly not! But don’t worry. I’ll have a publisher for you.” He shambled along beside me to the door, loose as a wired skeleton. “I’m serious, Charlie.” He took my hand in his hot dry one. “How often do you get a chance to alter the history of your country?”
    Leggett had managed the wrong appeal. It was my turn to be condescending. “I’ll tell that to Colonel Burr. Just by living and breathing he has altered the lives of every American a number of times, and I can’t see that it has done him much good.”
    “Let me reflect ironically, dear Charlie. You change history.”
     
    DO I BETRAY the Colonel? In a small way, yes. Do I hurt him? No, An anonymous pamphlet maintaining that he was the devil would distress him not at all. Much worse has been written about him by such supremely non-anonymous figures as Jefferson and Hamilton. Also, if he is consistent, he could hardly complain if the world were to know he is the father of Van Buren. The Colonel often says, “Whenever a woman does me the honour of saying that I am father to her child, I gracefully acknowledge the compliment and disguise any suspicion that I might have to the contrary.”
    On the other hand, the Colonel would be most distressed if Van Buren were to lose the election because of the Burr relationship. Well, I have no choice. Leggett has offered me a way out of drudgery; a means to support myself by writing. I shall take it. Also, there is—I confess—a certain joy in tricking the slyest trickster of our time. I’m fond of the Colonel; but fonder still of survival.

Four
    THE VOYAGE INTO CONNECTICUT was cut Short by business.” Colonel Burr sat wreathed in smoke from a long seegar. The inner office. Describe: torn felt curtains cover dusty window-panes, diffusing the green summer light; the effect is infernal, no, subaqueous, a watery world into which the visitor swims, barely able to discern the tall break-front containing tattered law books; the baize-covered table, the portrait of a plump dark girl—the Colonel’s