Aaron Burr / Theodosia Prevost

 

Aaron Burr

During much of 1781, Burr concentrated on his law studies, sometimes spending as many as twenty hours a day. Theodosia Prevost stayed with Burr’s sister Sally in Litchfield, Connecticut far away from New Jersey where her friends were beginning to notice her feelings for Burr. In December of that year, he received a letter from her asking him to join her as quickly as possible. He went immediately to her side.

Aaron Burr: Good afternoon, Madam Prevost. I came as quickly as I could.

Theodosia Prevost: Please Aaron come and sit down I have sad news that I must share with you.

Aaron: (Burr’s wide smile disappears as he sits down with Theodosia) What has happened?

Theodosia: It’s about my husband.

Aaron: He has come home?

Theodosia: No. I have just received word that he has been suffering for several weeks with yellow fever and has just died.

Early in 1780 James Prevost was assigned to Jamaica to deal with disturbances there. The health conditions in Jamaica debilitated the English troops. In July Prevost reported to London that most of his officers were in the infirmary, and he feared the annihilation of his regiment. Prevost's own health was in decline. Sometime in 1780 he sent his sons back to their mother at the Hermitage, and they undoubtedly reported on their father's poor health. In December 1781, Theodosia received notification that her husband had died of yellow fever.

Theodosia: I am beyond grief. I wanted to tell him about us when he came home— a healthy hero so that the wagging tongues would be stilled. And now he is gone and I cannot be the honest wife although sinning with another was my destiny.

Aaron: It is a sin only if you believe our union was sinful. I do not.  For many weeks, I referred to you only as Madam Prevost, respecting your married state. If in time and proximity, we yielded to temptation only proves us to be human and not those who sit above the clouds with Apollo and Zeus.

Theodosia: Please don’t make fun of this, Aaron. But why did you pick me out? I am far from the prettiest woman in our group of officer wives.

Aaron: For me there was no other. Everything I see in you is beauty.

Theodosia Burr

Theodosia: I am ten years older than you and have had children.

Aaron: When an appropriate time has passed, I’ll come to you and the children on bended knee and beg that you take this smited school boy to your bosom in holy matrimony.

Theodosia: But will you tire of me as you tired of the war that you so heartily embraced at the beginning of the hostilities?

Aaron: Now it is you who has stopped being serious.  It is true that I had a romantic notion of war at the beginning but when I saw camp life up close, I was repelled by the meanest of it, the stench of the latrines. I saw human beings reduced to their lowest common lot. I was repulsed by everything I saw—the sharing of prostitutes among five or six drunken soldiers, the language was crude, the cleanliness sorely ignored and field discipline was nonexistent. Is it any wonder that I came and sought out gentle folk for conversation?

Theodosia: And so we conversed, had dinner with friends and even dared to dance when the wine was particularly bewitching.  But I didn’t see you engaging single women in conversation. You kept coming back to me.

Burr: You my dear have a mind like a rich enchanting forest, full of unexpected pleasures that tease and titillate the senses which you describe using words that remind me that I have truly returned to a civilized world. And when I learned that you sympathized with the desires of the patriots to be free from Great Britain, I knew you had to be my life-long companion.

The few surviving letters between them give some insight into what increasingly bound them together - an interest in the ideas of leading thinkers and thoughts touching on the meaning of life, their happiness and their future, as well as how to react to the negative opinions of others concerning their relationship.

Hardly had Burr begun his career as a political fighter than he lost his cherished companion to a disorder of the uterus, quite possibly cancer. She was only forty-eight years old.