During the chit-chat after the cloth had been removed a note was handed the Colonel. Blennerhassett, who sat next to him, detected the odor of musk and mentioned it. This was the cue for his host to enliven the company with the story of a flirtation. Blennerhassett gave space to it in his diary “only to convey an idea of the temperament and address which enabled this character on certain occasions, like the snake, to cast his slough, and through age and debauchery, seem to uphold his ascendancy over the sex.”
Yet, in spite of this caustic criticism, Blennerhassett did not cease to marvel at Burr’s ingenuity. He discovered in the Colonel’s possession a complete file of all the depositions made before the Grand Jury. “It must be confessed,” he remarked, “that few other men in his circumstances, could have procured these documents out of the custody of offices filled by his inveterate enemies. I have long been at a loss to imagine the means he used, of which I am not yet fully informed.”
Burr, too, succumbed to the malady which had laid low so many people in Richmond. On one of his visits Blennerhassett found him in bed. He suggested that a doctor be called, to which Burr replied that he had no confidence in the local physicians. Blennerhassett expressed himself as being of the same opinion, unless he excepted Dr. McClurg. This was an unwarranted reflection against some of Richmond’s outstanding members of the medical profession.
Blennerhassett thoughtfully went to a druggist and returned with medicine carefully prepared which he left with the Colonel. When he returned in the evening to see how his patient was faring, Burr confessed that, instead of taking Blennerhassett’s medicine, he had given himself a dose of laudanum. He defended his action on the ground that he felt weak and in need of an opiate.
At one of their meetings Burr confided to Blennerhassett that as soon as the trial was over he proposed to set off immediately for England, there to collect money for his projects.
“In London, no doubt,” commented Blennerhassett bitterly, “he will pledge himself to appropriate every guinea they will advance him to the promotion of such operations on the continent as will best serve the interests of Britain; and if he had not already exposed his duplicity and incapacity in his favorite area of intrigue to Yrujo, he would again as readily promise to advance, with Spanish dollars and Spanish arms, the fortunes of the Spanish minister and his master.”
Toward the close of the trial Blennerhassett had the pleasure of drinking tea and spending the evening at the Chevalliés’. There he met Mrs. David Randolph, formerly the mistress of Moldavia, and the sister of a son-in-law of Jefferson. Moldavia, derived from the names of Molly and David Randolph, was Richmond’s fashionable boarding house. Mrs. Randolph was famous as a provider and the author of a cook book. She, it will be recalled, was credited also with having designed a tin-lined ice chamber for storing perishable foods that was used as model for the first American refrigerator. Blennerhassett found her accomplished, charming in manner, and possessing a masculine mind. He recorded that, in spite of her relationship to the President, “I heard more pungent strictures upon Jefferson’s head and heart ... and she certainly uttered more treason than my wife ever dreamed of, for she ridiculed the experiment of a republic in this country.” No wonder since the President had deprived her husband, a Federalist, of the lucrative post of U.S. Marshal of Virginia.
The last days of the trial were enlivened also by a personal encounter between General Wilkinson and young Sam Swartwout. They ran into each other on a narrow sidewalk and the injured young man shouldered the portly major general off into the street, uniform and all. He followed this insult with a challenge to a duel to which Wilkinson did not reply. He would have no correspondence with traitors, and conspirators, he declared. Swartwout therefore was reduced to publishing in the Virginia Gazette an open letter to the General which read:
“Sir—I could not have supposed that you would have completed the catalogue of your crime by adding to the guilt of treachery, forgery and perjury, the accomplishment of cowardice....
“Having failed in two different attempts to procure an interview with you, such as no gentleman of honor could refuse, I have only to pronounce and publish you to the world as a coward and poltroon.”