“My own Alexander,” I whispered breathlessly, my face close to his. “If you wish it, I’ll wed you now, tomorrow, however and wherever you choose. We needn’t wait for my parents at all.”
“Oh, Eliza,” he said ruefully, smoothing my hair back from my face. “Nothing would bring me more joy than to hold you in my arms as my wife. But as much as I long for that day, I won’t ask you to make that sacrifice. You’re Eliza Schuyler, and you deserve a proper wedding, surrounded by your family, and I wouldn’t rob you of that.”
Reluctantly I nodded, realizing how foolish I’d been to suggest such a giddy plan. Another elopement would break my poor mother’s heart, and I wouldn’t wish Alexander to be forced to face my father’s wrath. The rashness of an unexpected marriage could even compromise his position in the army; His Excellency expected his officers—especially one as trusted as Alexander—to behave with measured decorum, and not to run off with a general’s daughter.
“Perhaps it is for the best that we wait, but I wish it could be otherwise,” I said wistfully. Still perched on his lap, I smoothed his neck cloth and straightened the collar of his coat with would-be-wifely concern. “There is so much that is unsettled in our lives because of the war, that if we could only be wed . . .”
I let the words drift off, because they didn’t really need to be said. I’m sure he understood as well as I. The war was a constant pall over all of us, with no guarantees of what might happen next. When the army broke camp in the spring, all the wives and families of the officers from Lady Washington downward would return to their homes, and the men would head to battle. Alexander complained of being desk-bound as an aide-de-camp, but once the fighting resumed, he would be in as much danger as any other soldier. The reasons for waiting to marry were undeniable, yet still I feared that I could lose him before he’d ever truly been mine.
“In time, my angel, in time,” he said softly. “I’ll go to Amboy, and you shall remain here to welcome your father. We’ll both have our orders, won’t we? I’ll be thick in tedious negotiations with the British, while you’ll be persuading your father of the wisdom of our match.”
I tried to smile. “You’ve told me yourself that the negotiations aren’t so very arduous, and how in the evenings you’ll be expected to dine every night with the British officers as if they were your boon companions.”
“That is true,” he admitted. “The British like nothing more than to drink themselves into a stupor every night. I will endure it, of course, if it means I can bring even one more of our men back to our side. You know that Congress is responsible for paying the keep of our own men in British hands, and God only knows how much of our payment ever reaches the poor wretches. To have as many of them returned to their regiments before the spring would be a benefit to everyone.”
“They couldn’t ask for a better champion.” It didn’t feel appropriate to discuss prisoners of war whilst sitting on his lap, and I eased from his knee, intending to return to my own chair.
But before I’d turned away, he’d caught me gently by the wrist.
“Eliza,” he said softly, in the voice that was deep and low and meant only for me. “Know that I will always be your champion first, above all others.”
I nodded, and all my earlier disappointment melted away. As I smiled down at him, unexpected tears stung my eyes, and I hurriedly dashed them away with the heel of my hand.
“Don’t weep, my love,” he said, half teasing and half not. “My sorry self isn’t worth your tears.”
“But you are.” My voice squeaked with emotion. “I’m crying because you make me so happy.”
“Ah, then, tears of joy.” He raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, lingering over the saltiness of my tears. “I vow to make those the only kind you’ll ever shed, Eliza, at least on my account. The sweetest tears of joy, and no others.”
I smiled, even as fresh tears slid down my cheeks. Such a beautiful promise to make, such a perfect vow from him.
How I wish it was one he’d been able to keep.
* * *
Soon after Alexander left with a small party for Amboy, a town on the Raritan Bay that overlooked Staten Island, and that served as the way station and ferry stop for travelers between New York and Philadelphia. It had also become something of an informal meeting point for the two armies, with our forces occupying Philadelphia and the British still holding New York. This was why Alexander had gone there to negotiate the mutual exchange of various prisoners from both sides.
Amboy was not far from Morristown, perhaps forty miles, but on account of the roads being rutted with ice, Alexander and his party required three long days to make their destination. I know this because he wrote to me as soon as he arrived, sending his love and informing me of his safe arrival.
I was, of course, delighted to receive his letter, and all the others that followed, for if I thought he’d written often to me when we were both together in Morristown, now, with a county between us, he seemed to have doubled his daily words.
He recounted the details of the negotiations, the officers he met and liked and the ones he didn’t, what he ate and what he drank, and any sundry scraps of gossip from New York involving acquaintances of my family’s. Forgetting (or choosing to forget) how far-reaching the Schuylers were in New York, he was simultaneously baffled and irritated by how my sisters Angelica and Peggy as well as I were mentioned in the nightly toasts of British officers. He also devoted much ink and paper to how thoroughly he missed me, and how much he longed to be with me again, and many small, private intimacies and endearments besides. No gentleman wrote a more devoted love letter than my Alexander, and no love letters were treasured more completely than I did his.
The only drawback to his literary devotion came with my replies. I couldn’t keep up with him, leastways not at the pace which he desired. I had never been facile with a pen in my hand, nor did inspiration come easily to me, the way it did to him. My spelling could be various and my hand lacked grace, and too often in the time it took me to capture an anecdote or sentiment upon the page, the words would fly clear away from my possession like a bull through an open gate, never to be recaptured. These lines which you read here, in all their clumsiness, are sufficient proof of how much I labored over my missives to him. Whereas his letters could cover sheet after sheet, mine were seldom more than a single page in length, and every word hard-fought at that.
It didn’t help matters that Papa arrived at his new lodgings in Morristown soon after Alexander had left. I bid thanks and farewell to my aunt and uncle and the crowded house of the Campfields, Rose packed up my trunks and belongings, and we shifted to the house my father had taken for the next few months. Yet I’d scarcely settled there before Papa announced that, as a treat, I was to accompany him back to Philadelphia, where he continued to hold his seat in Congress.
With the worst of the winter’s snows and ice behind us, our journey to Philadelphia was uneventful. When I’d been younger, New York had always been the city that we’d travel down the Hudson River to visit, but being patriots, we had not returned there since the British had seized control of the main island in the fall of 1776. Although some of Philadelphia’s citizens with Tory sentiments had fled, it was now the largest of our country’s cities with wide streets, grand homes, and handsome public buildings and churches built mainly of brick.
There was much to entertain me while my father tended to his political business: plays and musical gatherings, teas and suppers held by friends old and new, sermons to heed on Sundays, shops to visit, and parks to stroll. Because of Papa, I received more invitations than I could accept.
There was another side to all this company and entertainment, however, and I found it both discomfiting and disrespectful. While in Morristown, where everyone I met was connected in some fashion to the army and to His Excellency, the talk had always been of the deprivations our troops endured, especially during this winter’s storms and hardships, and how little support the general and men were r
eceiving from Congress. But here in Philadelphia, the home of that same Congress, the conversation over tea and supper was of how the army scandalously squandered whatever was granted them by the magnanimity of Congress, and worse, how much His Excellency exaggerated the needs of his forces to squeeze more from Congress.
None of this was true. In fact, the truth was quite the opposite of these assumptions, and I didn’t like how these fine, wealthy Philadelphian ladies made such free assumptions. I didn’t like how they sat before their warm fires and whispered about soldiers who had spent the winter shivering in makeshift cabins, and soon would be heading off to risk their lives once again on the behalf of us safely at home.
I knew the truth, because I’d witnessed it myself, and I knew many of the officers they slandered, including the one I loved. I was my father’s daughter to the core, and to his delight (and Alexander’s, too, when I told him), I spoke up as often as I could in those elegant drawing rooms and parlors, and corrected as many ladies as I dared. It wasn’t in my nature to keep still in the face of falsehoods. I doubted they believed me, as people who are misinformed seldom do, and I’m certain they considered me ill-mannered, but at least I had not given the impression of agreeing with them through silence.
Was it any wonder, then, that I soon tired of Philadelphia? What my father had intended as a pleasurable journey quickly came to feel more like a punishment, keeping me farther away from Alexander.
I missed him more than I’d believed possible. He filled my thoughts awake, and my dreams when I slept. I was certain I heard his voice and his laughter from the next room, or his footfall in the hallway. Whenever I glimpsed an officer in a uniform like his in the street, my heart beat faster until he turned, and I realized the man’s face was not the one I wished most to see.
My only solace came in Alexander’s letters, speaking to me across the miles. I replied as swiftly as I could, filling them with pledges of my own love and devotion. But instead of bringing him the same comfort I took from his letters, mine seemed only to make his doubts grow.
He took my brevity as a sign not of my lack of talent for letter writing, but proof that I was enjoying the pleasures of the city and forgetting him. It wasn’t so much that he was jealous, or picturing me in the company of other gentlemen. Instead he worried that I’d had time to reconsider my love for him, and that I’d decided he lacked the qualities I required in a husband.
He tried to cover his fears with playful witticisms, but I wasn’t fooled. Already I knew him so well, my dear Alexander. No matter how I reassured him, his uneasiness persisted in the saddest way possible, telling me he’d understand if I cast him away for being too poor. I was at a loss for how a gentleman who could bravely command a regiment in battle could feel this unsure of his own considerable merits. There was one sentence in particular that struck me with its truth, and reverberated within my heart—“You must always remember that your best friend is where I am”—and that made me long to fly to his side to reassure him both of his worth, and my love.
He was indeed my best friend, and all I wished was to be where he was.
On my last day in Philadelphia, I made one final call on a lady who sorely needed company. By rights Mrs. Peggy Arnold and I seemed fated to enjoy each other’s company, we’d that much in common. We were close in age, and her husband, a major general, had served with my father, who held General Arnold in the highest regard for his bravery and military prowess in the northern campaigns.
But General Arnold had not fared as well in his most recent post as the military commander of Philadelphia, however, and had garnered so much ill will among the citizens that he had been compelled to resign. Worse still, he had recently faced a court-martial over his behavior while in the post, and though he’d been acquitted, the rumors continued to the extent that he had left the region until matters settled. He’d also been forced to leave Peggy behind, who had only just given birth to their first child, a son.
It was a sad story all around, and when Papa urged me to call upon her for the sake of good will, I happily agreed. How could I turn away from the opportunity to congratulate another lady on her safe delivery, and to welcome the blessing of her new baby into the world?
But when I called upon Mrs. Arnold, she appeared in low spirits, and to take little joy in her babe, who slept in a beribboned cradle beside her chair. Although she received me dressed in fashionable and costly undress—a pink silk jacket edged with fur over a quilted silk petticoat, a profusion of lace around her neck and elbows, and her hair lightly powdered—her eyes still carried the exhaustion of her recent confinement, and her entire posture drooped beneath the misery of her separation from her husband.
“Please forgive the meanness of my situation, Miss Schuyler,” she said with a weary wave of her hand. “Until my husband summons me to our new home, I am forced to remain in this place as if I were a prisoner.”
“Not at all, Mrs. Arnold,” I said. Her description surprised me. The house was hardly mean, but pleasant and well furnished. Papa had told me that with her husband away, she was residing here in the home of a friend, and while I thought this an ungrateful way to repay the friend’s hospitality, I was willing to ascribe it to the changeable nature of new mothers.
“Surely you must be in Heaven itself,” I continued, “so long as you have this little cherub at your side.”
He was a beautiful baby, with wisps of golden curls and full cheeks like his mother’s. If I were in her position, I would indeed feel blessed to have such this perfect reminder of my husband and his love, especially in the middle of a war. I’d often wondered if Alexander’s son would resemble him: would he inherit his father’s golden red hair, his smile, his blue-green eyes that were as changeable as the sea?
“My darling little Edward,” Mrs. Arnold murmured, and sighed as she glanced at the sleeping baby. “How fortunate he is that he knows not the persecutions his poor father has endured!”
“You must be brave, Mrs. Arnold, for your child’s sake and for your own.” As a soldier’s daughter, I knew the importance of being stoic. “Your husband would wish that for you.”
“Alas, my poor husband.” She drew a lace-trimmed handkerchief from her sleeve and daubed prettily at her eyes. “He has so many enemies! It wasn’t enough that he became a cripple in the service of his country. His enemies now hound him wherever he goes, and will not rest until he is completely ruined.”
I was beginning to suspect her sorrows were for effect and that she might make a better actress on the stage than a general’s wife, yet again I granted her the benefit of the doubt.
“Surely things will soon improve, Mrs. Arnold,” I said. “Now that the court-martial is over and your husband is acquitted, he can again resume his duties with the army.”
“You don’t understand my husband’s situation, Miss Schuyler,” she said with another great sigh. “The acquittal means nothing. The villains in Congress and in the army will continue to plot against him and deny his hopes for promotion and reward. If only he had friends he could trust!”
“But he does,” I said. “My father speaks of General Arnold as a hero, and he and His Excellency both wish to help your husband to restore his reputation as quickly as possible.”
She sighed again. “You father is an honorable gentleman, yes,” she admitted. “But if there were someone closer to His Excellency, someone able to sway him in favor of my husband, someone who was constantly in his company.”
She looked at me expectantly, as if I alone possessed the answer. I am glad to say I didn’t understand her meaning.
“The general is a wise and experienced gentleman,” I began. “I’m certain he’ll make a decision that shall benefit you—”
“I’d heard you share an intrigue with Colonel Hamilton,” she said. “His Excellency’s most favored aide-de-camp. That is true, yes?”
“No,” I said quickly, blushing and thinking again of how unsettling it was to be the centerpiece of idle gossip. “That is, yes,
Colonel Hamilton serves as a member of the General’s Family at headquarters, and yes, I am honored to consider him a dear friend, but there is no ‘intrigue’ to our connection.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, leaning forward with more animation than before. “My husband has only the highest praise for Colonel Hamilton, for his intelligence and his cleverness, and his devotion to the general. But then, that is only to be expected, isn’t it, considering Colonel Hamilton’s illustrious patrimony.”
I frowned. “I fear you’re mistaken, Mrs. Arnold. Colonel Hamilton has achieved much, but through his own industry and the support of his friends, not his father, a Scottish gentleman long absent from his life.”
“Your reticence is admirable, Miss Schuyler,” she said with an archness that made me uneasy. “But you needn’t be so discreet with me. The truth is widely known here in Philadelphia, and explains much of the general’s fondness for Colonel Hamilton.”
“I have told you the truth as I have heard it from Colonel Hamilton himself,” I said, ready to defend Alexander in whatever way necessary. “There is no other, Mrs. Arnold.”
She smiled slyly. “But there is, isn’t it? Everyone has heard how the colonel is the general’s natural son, conceived while His Excellency was visiting the Caribbean long ago. They see the obvious resemblance in the same coppery hair, the same line to his jaw, and you cannot deny how His Excellency positively dotes upon Colonel Hamilton, favoring him as if he truly were the son he never sired with Lady Washington.”
“Hush, madam, please!” I exclaimed, not so much scandalized by what she said as shocked that she’d repeat such ill-founded gossip. “Colonel Hamilton His Excellency’s son! That goes beyond tattle to purest slander, and I will not hear another word. Good day, Mrs. Arnold.”
I, Eliza Hamilton Page 9
