In 1812 it seemed safe, even advisable, for the exile to return to America again, but where was the money to be found?  He was penniless.  Well, the money was found quite easily.  Vanderlyn made a pile of all his best canvases, sold them, and handed over the proceeds to his friend and erstwhile benefactor.  And so Burr came home to America.

I think the nicest part of all this is Vanderlyn’s loyal silence about the older man’s affairs.  It is likely that he knew more about Burr’s troubles and perplexities and mistakes than any other man, but he was fiercely reticent on the subject.  Once a writer approached Vanderlyn for some special information.  It was after Burr’s death, and the scribe had visions of publishing something illuminating about this most mysterious and inscrutable genius.

“And now about Burr’s private life,” he insinuated confidentially.

The artist turned on him savagely.

“You let Burr’s private life alone!” he snarled.

The author fled, deciding that he certainly would do just that!

Burr came home.  But fate was not through with him yet.  Dear Theo set sail without delay, from South Carolina, to meet her father in New York.  He had been gone years, and she was hungry for the sight of him.  Her little son had died, and father and daughter longed to be together again.

Her boat was the Patriot—­and the Patriot has never been heard from since she put out.  She was reported sunk off Cape Hatteras, but for many years a haunting report persisted that she had been captured by the pirates that then infested coastwise trade.  So Theodosia—­barely thirty years old—­vanished from the world so far as we may know.  The dramatic and tragic mystery of her death seems oddly in keeping with her life and that of her father.  Somehow one could scarcely imagine Theo growing old peacefully on a Southern plantation!

Her father never regained his old eagerness for life after her loss.  He lived for years, practised law once more with distinction and success on Nassau Street, even made a second marriage very late in life, but I think some vivid, vital, romantic part of him, something of ambition and fire and adventure, was lost at sea with his child Theodosia.

And now shall we go back, for a few moments only, to Richmond Hill?

Counsellor Benson (or Benzon) is generally supposed to have been the last true-blue celebrity to inhabit the famous old house.  He was Governor of the Danish Islands, and an eccentric.  Our old friend Verplanck says that he himself dined there once with thirteen others, all speaking different languages....  “None of whom I ever saw before,” he states, “but all pleasant fellows....  I, the only American, the rest of every different nation in Europe and no one the same, and all of us talking bad French together!”