The American Chronicle 1 - Burr by Gore Vidal Read Free Book Online Page A

ear.
    “I’m too poor to marry.”
    “Then marry an heiress.”
    We have had this conversation before. I changed the subject. Asked if there were any new-comers to Thomas Street. There was. “A treasure come to me from Connecticut, where pretty girls grow like onions. I can’t think why. It must be the air. She is—she says—seventeen. I would suspect younger. She is—she says—a virgin as of this morning. I would suspect that in her modesty she exaggerates, but not by much.”
    As Mrs. Townsend spoke, I was more and more excited. I must be deeply depraved for I am drawn to the very young, girls just en fleur ,as Colonel Burr would say: his taste, too—at least in old age; as a young man he was notoriously attracted to women older than he.
    “Will you present me to this—Connecticut onion?”
    Mrs. Townsend made a price. I made a counter-price. We haggled as we often do when there is something special.
    Price agreed and paid, I did not immediately rush upstairs, to her amazement. “But, go to it, Mr. Schuyler. Her name is Helen Jewett. The back bedroom on the left. Or do you want me to present you formally?”
    To her further amazement I requested tea. As she poured it, I asked her if she knows Colonel Burr (she has no idea where I work or even what I do). A smile revealed perfect dentures, of genuine Indian (from India) ivory. “Colonel Burr! There was a man! I think the handsomest in the city when I was a girl. Those black eyes! And how he loved the ladies! Really loved them. Why, he would talk to them by the hour, busy as he was. Not like General Hamilton who was always much too busy to talk to anyone who didn’t matter. Too busy for almost everything. Why, he would leap upon a girl and before she knew what was happening he was pulling up his breeches and out the door. A handsome man, too, General Hamilton, but foxy .You know what I mean? He had that curious orangey hair and freckled skin, which some people like and some don’t. I don’t.” The elegant nostrils flared a moment. “And he had a sharp foxy smell to him I never could bear.”
    “Then you knew them both?”
    Mrs. Townsend gave a low laugh. “Yes, even—or especially—in the Biblical sense I knew them both. Between the two they must’ve gone through every gay girl in the town, and I was one of the gayest then. Now let me ring ...”
    “Like Madame Jumel?”
    “Eliza Bowen?” The elegant head shook with disdain. “Never could bear that tart! Always being kept by Frenchmen. I don’t know if that was her taste or theirs. She lived with a sea captain for a long time in William Street and tried to pretend she didn’t know ladies like me existed, but of course we knew all about her. Our sorority is not that large, you know, or at least it wasn’t thirty years ago when all the world was young. But Liza’s done well, they tell me. She wanted money and a place in society. She got the money. I don’t think the other is possible. Not in New York, thank God. There are some things money cannot buy.”
    I steered her back to Colonel Burr. But she had not known him for many years. “I never leave Thomas Street and he never comes here. I think I saw him once at the theatre, after he came back from Europe, that must’ve been in twelve or thirteen. But maybe it was someone else. He was a hero of mine. Even though I am still a Federalist at heart.”
    “Didn’t you come from Kinderhook originally?”
    Mrs. Townsend looked more than usually startled. “Did I tell you that?” But she was not interested in my reply; she forgave herself the indiscretion. “No, Claverack. Not too far away.”
    “You must have known the Van Buren family.”
    Obviously she wanted to find some sequential link but refused to humble herself by asking a question. She is a woman of answers only. “I was once or twice in their tavern. But I don’t remember the son. I suspect he was already in New York. Then when I was seventeen I came to the city, too, eager to take my