promise of Burr’s newspaper ad, any visitors coming to view the mansion found it rather less richly appointed than in years past: Gone were the Brussels rugs, the pianoforte, the fine china service, and the costly silvered mirrors that had once graced the halls.
There was something else they could not see, and that was theletters crowding the absent colonel’s desk. When Burr was away, his slave Peggy was careful to observe two tasks:to retrieve the ink bottles so that they would not freeze in his unheated office and to lock up his papers. Left in open view, they would have raised the eyebrows of any visitor. “The extreme wrong I have suffer’d from a person in whose candour & integrity I had placed implicit confidence, and by much art and management have been basely defrauded by him, is a lesson of care and caution in my future steppings,” accused Henry Drinker, a Philadelphia correspondent. The letter was now nearly a year old and still unanswered. Instead, there was a note in Burr’s hand to an impatient uncle: “I do not as yet perceive any resource from which I can raise a Dollar.… You constantly address me as if it required only an exertion of Will on my part to raise money.” What money he had raised was of the worst sort: In late November 1799 he’d written out apromissory note for $1,500 to a pair of local merchants.
No, what a casual visitor to this fine mansion could not see was what a great many creditors and business partners had come to suspect about their old comrade and founding father: Aaron Burr was broke.
T HAT S UNDAY in Philadelphia, the Drinker household received a sharp knock at the front door of 110 North Front Street.
Burr?
The statesman was waiting outside on the cold stone steps, brisk and desirous of meeting the master of the house. It could not exactly be called an impromptu visit, for the two-day journey from New York down toPhiladelphia entailed taking a ferry past the perilous chunks of ice in the East River, and then coach service from Paulus Hook, all while limited by the coach company to a paltry fourteen pounds of luggage. The timing of his arrival was not good: Henry Drinker was one of the most prominent local Quaker merchants and a longstanding clerk of the local meetinghouse; Sunday afternoon was hardly a fit time for him to be conducting business. ButBurr had been avoiding Drinker for months—and now urgently wished to speak to him.
The colonel was ushered inside and warmed his hands as he admired the house. Where New York homes were wooden and Dutch, Philadelphia’s were brick and British—and this one was a splendidthree-story mansion on a double lot, placed squarely amid the new fortunes and lively mercantile activity of North Front Street. A few doors down,at the back of a chocolatier’s shop, horses walked in endless circles to drive the mill wheels for grinding cocoa; beyond that, there were the lathes and lumber piles of a cabinet workshop. Henry’s own home was fittingly known among the locals as “Drinker’s Big House,” the monument of a lifetime of canny trading and debt collection by the old man.
As his guest settled in, Henry Drinkerwalked in gingerly on his corns, showing some of the frailty of a man of sixty-five. Yet his rectitude and crisp manner remained, and he bore the plain clothes andthe double chin of a successful Quaker merchant. Burr, a generation younger at forty-three, was as small and wiry as the merchant was portly; with his warm brown eyes and tousle of black hair just beginning to gray, the colonel still possessed the energy and quick bearing of a field officer.
There were pleasantries to observe and news to exchange—terrible case up in New York, was it not? Burr remained an old and honored guest in Drinker’s house. As a new widower some six years before, he’d evenbrought his young Theodosia for a visit once. But this particular call was still a shock.
So what is to be done?
Surely the colonel could see the difficult
There was something else they could not see, and that was theletters crowding the absent colonel’s desk. When Burr was away, his slave Peggy was careful to observe two tasks:to retrieve the ink bottles so that they would not freeze in his unheated office and to lock up his papers. Left in open view, they would have raised the eyebrows of any visitor. “The extreme wrong I have suffer’d from a person in whose candour & integrity I had placed implicit confidence, and by much art and management have been basely defrauded by him, is a lesson of care and caution in my future steppings,” accused Henry Drinker, a Philadelphia correspondent. The letter was now nearly a year old and still unanswered. Instead, there was a note in Burr’s hand to an impatient uncle: “I do not as yet perceive any resource from which I can raise a Dollar.… You constantly address me as if it required only an exertion of Will on my part to raise money.” What money he had raised was of the worst sort: In late November 1799 he’d written out apromissory note for $1,500 to a pair of local merchants.
No, what a casual visitor to this fine mansion could not see was what a great many creditors and business partners had come to suspect about their old comrade and founding father: Aaron Burr was broke.
T HAT S UNDAY in Philadelphia, the Drinker household received a sharp knock at the front door of 110 North Front Street.
Burr?
The statesman was waiting outside on the cold stone steps, brisk and desirous of meeting the master of the house. It could not exactly be called an impromptu visit, for the two-day journey from New York down toPhiladelphia entailed taking a ferry past the perilous chunks of ice in the East River, and then coach service from Paulus Hook, all while limited by the coach company to a paltry fourteen pounds of luggage. The timing of his arrival was not good: Henry Drinker was one of the most prominent local Quaker merchants and a longstanding clerk of the local meetinghouse; Sunday afternoon was hardly a fit time for him to be conducting business. ButBurr had been avoiding Drinker for months—and now urgently wished to speak to him.
The colonel was ushered inside and warmed his hands as he admired the house. Where New York homes were wooden and Dutch, Philadelphia’s were brick and British—and this one was a splendidthree-story mansion on a double lot, placed squarely amid the new fortunes and lively mercantile activity of North Front Street. A few doors down,at the back of a chocolatier’s shop, horses walked in endless circles to drive the mill wheels for grinding cocoa; beyond that, there were the lathes and lumber piles of a cabinet workshop. Henry’s own home was fittingly known among the locals as “Drinker’s Big House,” the monument of a lifetime of canny trading and debt collection by the old man.
As his guest settled in, Henry Drinkerwalked in gingerly on his corns, showing some of the frailty of a man of sixty-five. Yet his rectitude and crisp manner remained, and he bore the plain clothes andthe double chin of a successful Quaker merchant. Burr, a generation younger at forty-three, was as small and wiry as the merchant was portly; with his warm brown eyes and tousle of black hair just beginning to gray, the colonel still possessed the energy and quick bearing of a field officer.
There were pleasantries to observe and news to exchange—terrible case up in New York, was it not? Burr remained an old and honored guest in Drinker’s house. As a new widower some six years before, he’d evenbrought his young Theodosia for a visit once. But this particular call was still a shock.
So what is to be done?
Surely the colonel could see the difficult
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