Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century

by Virginia Tatnall Peacock

At a time when woman was regarded rather as the companion of a man's heart than as his intellectual mate, "the soft green of the soul on which we rest our eyes that are fatigued with beholding more glaring objects," Theodosia Burr's mental faculties were so developed and trained as to fit her for the most complete and sympathetic union with father, husband, and son.

It is but a negative tribute to say that she was by far the best-educated woman of her time and country. In the beauty of her mind and person she realized her father's ideal of a perfect woman, and amply satisfied his pride and vanity. On the eve of his duel with Hamilton he wrote to her, "I am indebted to you, my dearest Theodosia, for a very great portion of the happiness which I have enjoyed in this life. You have completely satisfied all that my heart and affections had hoped for or ever wished."

Theodosia was the only child of Burr's marriage with the widow of a British army officer who had lost his life in the West Indies.

Fresh from the battle-fields of the Revolution, where he had won honors of which he was ever more tenacious than of those achieved elsewhere, and but recently admitted to the bar after a brief period of study, his marriage to a woman ten years his senior and the mother of two well-grown boys was a source of genuine wonderment to Burr's friends in New York. Young, of fascinating manner and appearance, some means, and good family, he might readily have aspired to an alliance with any one of those families which were a power in the State,—the Livingstons, the Van Rensselaers, or the Clintons. But before he quitted the army, Burr had discovered the charms of the society at the "Hermitage," presided over by Mrs. De Visme and her two daughters, one of whom was the widow of Colonel Prevost.

There he met the most distinguished men of his country, through whose influence this family had been spared the inconvenience of moving within the British lines at the outbreak of hostilities. In the library, there, he discovered a treasure-house of French literature, to which he was ever partial, and in the interchange of thought which followed his reading, Aaron Burr and Mrs. Prevost became constantly more imbued with a sense of the beauty and attraction of each other's minds. Through her he gleaned his first reverence for the intellectual power of woman, and to her he owed the happiest days of his life.

"The mother of my Theo," he said, speaking of her towards the close of his life, "was the best woman and the finest lady I have ever known." In her finished manner, her fine bearing, and her exquisite mind there was a delicate harmony that soothed and satisfied Burr's artistic soul. His marriage to her in July, 1782, put an end to the rumor that he was paying his addresses to Miss De Visme, to which his frequent visits to the "Hermitage" had given rise.

The first year of their married life was spent in Albany, where he was engaged in the practice of law, and where Theodosia was born on the 23d of June, 1783. In the fall of that year her parents removed to the city of New York, where they had leased a house in Maiden Lane, at a rental of two hundred pounds per year, to commence from the time the British troops left New York, which they did on November 23, 1783.

So prosperous were Burr's financial affairs that he early in his married life acquired also the possession of a country-seat, Richmond Hill, then two miles from the city. The house, a stately frame building with a lofty portico supported by Ionic columns, stood on a noble hill, several hundred feet in height, overlooking the river and the Jersey shore. It was surrounded by a lawn shaded by oaks, lindens, and cedars, on the outskirts of which on all sides stretched woods of more than a hundred acres. Within the enclosure was a pond known for many years after the property had passed from Burr's possession as Burr's Pond. On it Theodosia learned the graceful art of skating when still quite a little girl.

The house, built about the middle of the last century, was Washington's head-quarters in 1776, and Burr, who was there with him, conceived his first desire to become its possessor. It was occupied by John Adams during his tenure of the Vice-Presidency, when New York was the capital, and Burr's long possession of it culminated in the elegant hospitality of which it was the scene during his term as Vice-President. He returned there from Washington at the close of the sessions of Congress, and entertained with a lavishness that eventually bankrupted him.