Mysteries of the missing

by Edward H. Smith

“The dying sailor professed to remember her well and said she was the last who perished, and that he never forgot her look of despair as she took the last step from the fatal plank. On reading this account, I regarded it as fiction; but on conversing with an officer of the navy he assured me of its probable truth and stated that on one of his passages home several years ago, his vessel brought two pirates in irons who were subsequently executed at Norfolk for recent offenses, and who, before their execution, confessed that they had been members of the same crew and had participated in the murder of Mrs. Alston and her companions.

“Whatever opinion may be entertained of the father, the memory of the daughter must be revered as one of the loveliest and most excellent of American woman, and the revelation of her untimely fate can only serve to invest that memory with a more tender and melancholy interest.”

Despite the crudities of most of those yarns and their obvious conflict with known facts, the public took the dying confessions seriously and the editors of Sunday supplements printed them with a gay air of credence and a sad attempt at seriousness. Whatever else was accomplished by this complicity with a most unashamed and unregenerate band of downright liars, the pirate legend came to be disseminated in every civilized country and there was gradually built up the great false tradition which hedges the name and fame of Theodosia Burr. She has even appeared in novels, American, British and Continental, in the shape of a mysterious queen of freebooters.

The celebrity of her case came to be such that it was in time seized upon by the art fakers—perhaps an inevitable step toward genuine famosity. Several authentic likenesses of Theodosia Burr are extant, notably the painting by John Vanderlyn in the Corcoran Gallery, Washington. Vanderlyn was the young painter of Kingston, N. Y., whom Burr discovered, apprenticed to Gilbert Stuart and sent to Paris for study. He painted the landing of Columbus scene in the rotunda of the Capitol. But the work of Vanderlyn and others neither restrained nor satisfied the freebooters of the arts. On the other hand, the pirate tales inspired them to profitable activity.

In the nineties of the last century the New York newspapers contained accounts of a painting of Theodosia Burr which had been found in an old seashore cottage near Kitty Hawk, N. C., the settlement afterwards made famous by the gliding experiments of the brothers Wright, and the scene of their first successful airplane flights. The printed accounts said that this picture had been found on an old schooner which had been wrecked off the coast many years before and various inconclusive and roundabout devices were employed for identifying it as a likeness of the lost mistress of Richmond Hill.

Later, in 1913, a similar story came into most florid publicity in New York and elsewhere. It was, apparently, given out by one of the prominent Fifth Avenue art dealers. A woman client, it was said, had become interested in the traditional picture of Theodosia Burr, recovered from a wrecked vessel on the coast of North Carolina. Accordingly, the art dealer had undertaken a search for the missing work of art and had at length recovered it, together with a most fascinating history.

In 1869 Dr. W. G. Pool, a physician of Elizabeth City, N. C., spent the summer at Nag’s Head, a resort on the outer barrier of sand which protects the North Carolina coast about fifty miles north of Cape Hatteras. While there he was called to visit an aged woman who lived in an ancient cabin about two miles out of the town. His ministrations served to recover her health and she expressed the wish to pay him in some way other than with money, of which useful commodity she had none. The good doctor had noticed, with considerable curiosity, a most beautiful oil painting of a “beautiful, proud and intelligent lady of high social standing.” He immediately coveted this picture and asked his patient for it, since she wanted to give him something in return for his leechcraft. She not only gave him the portrait but she told him how she had come by it. Many years before, when she was still a girl, the old woman’s admirer and subsequent first husband had, with some others, come upon the wreck of a pilot boat, which had stranded with all sails set, the rudder tied and breakfast served but undisturbed in the cabin. The pilot boat was empty and several trunks had been broken open, their contents being scattered about. Among the salvaged goods was this portrait, which had fallen to the lot of the old woman’s swain and come through him to her.

From this old woman and Dr. Pool, the picture had passed to others without ever having left Elizabeth City. There the enterprising dealer had found it in the possession of a substantial widow, and she had consented to part with it. The rest of the story—the essentials—was to be surmised. The wrecked pilot boat was, to be sure, the Patriot, the date of its stranding agreed with the beclouded incidents of January, 1813, and the “intelligent lady of high social standing” was none other than Theodosia Burr.

It is unfortunate that the reproductions of this marvelous and romantic work do not show the least resemblance to the known portrait of Theodosia, and it is also lamentable to find that the art dealer, in his sweet account of his find, fell into all the vulgar misconceptions and blunders as regards his subject and the tales of her demise. But, while both these portrait yarns may be dismissed without further attention, they have undoubtedly served to keep the old and enchanting story before modern eyes.

In the light of analysis the prosaic explanation of the Theodosia Burr case seems to be the acceptable one. The boat on which she embarked was small and frail. At the very time it must have been passing the treacherous region of Cape Hatteras, there was a storm of sufficient violence to scatter the heavy British frigates and ships of the line. The fate of a little schooner in such weather is almost a matter for assurance. Yet of certainty there can be none. The famous daughter of the traditional American villain—the devil incarnate to all the melancholy crew of hypocritical pulpiteers and propagandists—went down to sea in her cockleshell and returned no more. Eleven decades have lighted no candle in the darkness that engulfed her.