One might have marked a handsome young man with blue-gray eyes and a head of abundant chestnut hair. He was a stranger to Richmond and his accent betrayed a northern background. His name then meant nothing to anybody save the little group of Burr’s friends who had come down from New York to lend the prisoner moral support during the trial. This was Washington Irving, lately returned from a European tour. He had read law and been admitted to the New York bar; there was a report to the effect that he had actually had a client. But even at this early stage in his career he was more active with his pen. He and his older brother William, and William’s brother-in-law James K. Paulding, had just launched a sprightly magazine satirizing New York society under the title of _Salmagundi_. Brother William and Paulding were having to carry the burden while Washington was away. William was a Republican, Washington’s sympathies were Federalist. Fastidious by nature, Washington rose superior to the unpretentious merchant family into which he had been born. The Irvings, on the other hand, were immensely proud of their precocious son and all too glad to give him a helping hand in his rise in the world. They liberally financed the trip to Europe and it had been a great success. There young Irving made the grand tour and lived in style in the Paris of Napoleon’s empire. He had himself fitted out by the best tailor. He sat for the rising young American painter, John Vanderlyn, then resident in Paris. The work seems to have been undertaken out of the sheer delight of the artist in having such a pleasing model. On his travels Irving had made the acquaintance of two Virginia gentlemen of the bluest blood, a Mercer of Fredericksburg and Joseph Cabell, the Governor’s brother. He looked forward to renewing the acquaintance on his trip south, particularly that with Cabell who had just married Mary Walker Carter. Irving was told she was one of the wealthiest young women in the state. The young New Yorker was there on a literary retainer. It was said that some of Burr’s friends thought he might help the cause through his writings. But if any of his accounts of the trial ever got into the newspapers the record of them has been lost.