My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  Monroe chuckled. “Fearing I’d made a fool of myself, I couldn’t work up the nerve.”

  I smiled fondly, remembering how shy he’d been in those days. But he seemed far bolder now. “How is it that you’re still unmarried?”

  Monroe gave a good-natured shrug. “Well, for one thing, I’m a poor unpaid soldier, having inherited from my father only a small Virginia farm with barren fields turned to dust by tobacco.” Then he looked up at me with those soulful gray eyes, and added, “For another thing, the girl I loved married another man.”

  Ordinarily, I was not so vain to have dared imagine that he meant me. Especially since Burr told me Monroe had a sweetheart in Christina Wynkoop, daughter of a Pennsylvania congressman. But the way Monroe now stared at me, blushing to the tips of his ears, made me so uncomfortable that the two of us stood there, like mute blockheads.

  Fortunately, we were rescued by a knock at the back door.

  It was Theodosia Burr, bundled in a fur-lined cloak. “I thought I saw James Monroe at the end of the street.” As it happened, Theodosia had hosted Monroe when he was in the service of Lord Stirling, so another happy reunion took place in my kitchen. And when Monroe asked her advice on finding a wife in the city, she said, “You’re a congressman, now. An important man of the people. The ladies will flock to you given your accomplishments.”

  Monroe gave a belly laugh. “We never accomplish anything in Congress. We couldn’t pass Mr. Jefferson’s Land Ordinance for admitting new states to the Union, because it bans slavery after the year 1800. We couldn’t pass Mr. Jefferson’s proposal to make the dollar a national currency. We can’t agree on a site for our nation’s capital—or even if we are a nation, or a collection of states.”

  “Hamilton shares your frustration,” I said, readying the hot water in its pot over the stove. “It’s why he’s not in Congress anymore.”

  Monroe raised a brow. “My friend must have changed very much since the war if he is now content with drudgery at the bar while the country slides into disorder.”

  “Oh, Colonel Hamilton is never content about anything,” Theodosia replied with an indulgent smile. “He’s never at home. Why, it grieves my poor heart to know how often poor Betsy is left alone.”

  Theodosia wasn’t wrong. Even when Alexander was pacing our bedroom, practicing some argument at court, he was somewhere else. But it seemed a shrewish complaint about a man who was striving to provide for me and my children, and I didn’t want Monroe to think badly of him, so I rushed to his defense. “Why, I’m not alone at all. Between fine visitors such as yourselves and my beautiful children, my days are filled. And, honestly, Hamilton wouldn’t be the man I married without his sense of duty.”

  Besides, my husband’s work defending Tories had made his law practice thrive. But I didn’t want to explain that to Monroe, who had little cause to know about our financial circumstances or how severely persecuted our neighbors were.

  “I’ve heard Hamilton has helped to found a bank,” Monroe said.

  I nodded. Amidst all his legal cases, Alexander had written the new bank’s constitution and become actively involved in its organization. “The Bank of New York, just down the street. He hopes to address the derangement of our financial situation in the city.”

  “Which reminds me,” Theodosia said, pulling a folded broadsheet from her handbag. “You might wish to show this to Hamilton.”

  Inwardly I groaned, not needing to read it to know what it would say, for the New York papers vilified my husband daily for helping the persecuted Tories. He’d built his reputation on heroism but now reaped the bitter seeds of a different sort of fame. And the unfairness of it pained me.

  Having seen my father accused of treason, I was acutely sensitive to public censure. And because it set my husband’s temper on edge and fired his combative nature to see his name blackened in the press, it had become my regular practice to burn the papers that came to the house charging him with helping the most abandoned scoundrels in the universe.

  I was trying to decide where to hide Theodosia’s paper until I could dispose of it when she eyed the brewing coffee and said, “That’s going to take forever. We should go to a coffeehouse.”

  Monroe, who had probably spent all he had to acquire the coffee beans, looked crestfallen. So I ventured forth with, “It’s so cold that I prefer to make coffee at home. And while we’re waiting, let me treat the both of you to some of my homemade waffles,” I said, pulling out the Dutch waffle irons just like Mama’s that she’d given me as a present. “Reuniting with old friends is worthy of celebration.”

  “Waffles?” Beaming, Monroe grinned. “You remembered.”

  “I can’t promise they’ll be the same as your Mammy’s,” I said, laughing again at the memory of how he’d blurted out his craving to me all those years ago. “But I’ll slather them in butter.”

  Theodosia rolled her eyes but settled in at the table and assisted me as I prepared the old family recipe and heated the irons. “At least come out with us tonight. Both of you.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. Not without Hamilton.”

  “Of course you can,” Theodosia said. “Your Jenny can watch over the babies and Monroe can be your escort.”

  At that, Monroe stared at his feet. “I—I cannot imagine that would be thought, well, at all proper.”

  Theodosia laughed, and the next words she spoke reminded me so much of Angelica. “Perhaps not in your country of Virginia. But you’re in New York, now. A veritable vortex of folly and dissipation if the gazettes are to be believed.”

  I ladled the thick, golden batter into a hot iron. “Oh, be nice, Theodosia. Monroe is a very mannerly gentleman.” I recounted how, upon my offering to help tend his wounded shoulder, he’d nearly tripped over my mother’s sideboard table in fear my father would shoot him.

  Theodosia howled with laughter while Monroe chuckled at the memory, and the impasse about our plans for the evening was solved when my husband stumbled into the house stamping snow off his boots, nearly crashing headlong into his old friend. I could scarcely contain my amusement when Alexander murmured, with utter bewilderment, “Monroe?”

  The two men clasped hands, appraising one another from head to toe before clapping one another on the back with glad tidings. And within hours, Alexander had sent word of the reunion and called together an impromptu gathering in our dining room of Washington’s young upstarts, a heaping plate of waffles between them. Colonel Burr appeared at dusk with whiskey, and these one-time brothers-at-arms talked late into the winter’s night, telling old stories and debating how, in Monroe’s words, we could cement the union.

  I can never express how much good it did my heart to see these old friends and survivors of the war all together, laughing by a fire. Nor can I find words to say how much it hurts my heart now, knowing their friendships would come to a bitter, bloody end . . .

  * * *

  June 1785

  New York City

  “British ship in the harbor!” Jenny cried, rapping excitedly on the bedroom door. And though such an utterance would have caused panic only a few years before, it was now, for me, a bringer of joy. One for which I’d been waiting for days. “It’s a big one, mistress.”

  I was already dressed, my hair pinned. But I hadn’t fastened my earbobs or chosen a bonnet to match my dress, and in my excitement I didn’t bother with either. Instead, I flew down the stairs. “My sister’s here!”

  Alexander, on a rare day home from court, was holding Philip in the air and making our darling boy laugh. “You can’t know if it’s Angelica’s ship—”

  “Sisters know,” I insisted, rushing for the door.

  “I’ll arrange for a coach,” Alexander called after me, but I didn’t wait. I didn’t wait for anything. Not even a parasol to guard against the summer sun. Instead, I took to the tree-lined sidewalk and ran the five blocks to the water and Burnett’s Key. As the brick streets gave way to planks and mud, I dodged horse droppings, wagons, barrels,
and giant coils of rope, the unmistakable scent of the river filling my every breath.

  I was sweating by the time I saw the ship moored to the dock, but I didn’t care because the three tall masts and rigging of that ship were as welcome a sight as any I’d ever seen.

  “Angelica!” I cried, bouncing on my feet and waving when she appeared out of the disembarking throngs wearing a fashionable French straw hat with a striped ribbon and pink flowers in her hair.

  “Betsy!” We fell into each other’s arms while servants scurried to collect her trunks and baggage and children. And we gazed upon each other with joy. She’d been gone nearly two years, and now I couldn’t get enough of her.

  Alexander finally caught up with me and had nothing but warm smiles and affection for both Angelica and her husband, whose elusive disposition brightened considerably as Alex filled him in on all the latest goings-on about the city.

  That night, at a raucous impromptu supper of cold ham with thick slices of bread and butter, we all crowded around my little table, laughing and drinking wine and singing together. And when I put my baby daughter, Angelica’s namesake, into my sister’s arms, I fell in love with both of them all over again.

  In a fit of exuberance I said, “Hamilton says there’s a house for sale on Broadway. Mr. Carter, perhaps you could take it so we can all live closer together.”

  I blamed the wine and my overflowing heart for such an indiscreet suggestion. It wasn’t proper for a woman to suggest to a man what he should buy or where he should settle his family. But we Schuyler sisters had always nudged up against the line of what was proper and been adored by our husbands for it, so I was startled at the reaction.

  My brother-in-law scowled at me, and Angelica’s musical laugh cut off abruptly, giving way to a gloomy expression before she stared down at my new china.

  “A house on Broadway is a good investment,” Alexander broke in, supporting my suggestion, as if he hadn’t noticed the change in mood, or perhaps because he did. “My affection for you both made me look forward to having you as neighbors.”

  “We’re only here for a visit,” Mr. Carter explained. “We’ve taken a town house on Sackville Street in London where I intend to pursue a career in Parliament.”

  “London?” I choked out, shocked to my foundation. My sister’s husband had made an outrageous profit in the war by equipping the Americans and the French, which could not have endeared him to his king. And even if that were not the case, there was the murky matter of what had caused him to flee England in the first place. “How . . . how can you expect to be welcomed there, Mr. Carter?” I asked, fighting against despair at the thought of losing Angelica again, and after I’d assumed her return to be permanent.

  “Because Carter is only his nom de guerre,” my sister said, finally finding her voice. “Allow me to introduce my husband, Mr. John Barker Church . . .”

  My mouth fell agape as Angelica explained in an unusually flat voice that her husband was actually from a prominent family, and though he’d fled England under pecuniary, romantic, and legal embarrassments, he’d returned to Europe to learn that a man he thought he had killed in a duel was still quite alive. And he was now emboldened to return to the family fold.

  Ticking off the obstacles on her long fingers, Angelica said, “Jack is now respectably married, more than able to pay his creditors, and there are whispers that he’d be welcome in the Whig party.” Her words hung thick over the table, like a net dropped from a sprung trap in which we were all awkwardly caught.

  Clearing his throat, Alexander tried to lighten the mood, raising a toast in honor of being able to live freely in this new world we’d created, and go by one’s own name. I suspected, because of his dealings as my brother-in-law’s agent, that he already knew his true identity. And though I held my tongue through the rest of the meal, I couldn’t quite recover.

  “Did you know?” I asked that night, undressing before bed.

  Alexander’s shoulders fell, answering me even before he took my hands into his. “Yes. I’m sorry I kept it from you. It was a condition of my employment as his agent.”

  Even as unhappy as I was, I could hardly hold duty against him. “But he’s a gambler,” I said, allowing myself to be drawn against my husband’s chest. “Jack Carter—Church, I mean, gambled himself into debt, he gambled on the war, and now he’s gambling my sister’s future in returning to England.”

  I was being unkind, I knew. And unfeminine in expressing such an opinion upon a matter about which I knew too little. I thought my husband might scold me on both counts, but instead, he led me to bed, climbed under the covers with a book related to work he’d neglected during the day, and said only, “I know you’re worried, but let’s try to enjoy the time we have with your sister while she’s here.”

  So began a frenzied, near-frantic social whirl designed to squeeze every moment of pleasure out of Angelica’s very brief visit. We went with our children on long walks about the city. Attended balls and dinner parties and the theater. And we shopped. Or at least, we tried.

  Peering into the shop windows disapprovingly, Angelica frowned. “Oh, my poor country. I’m afraid there’s virtually nothing that can be had here in the way of dresses, shoes, or women’s fripperies that can’t be found better, or cheaper, in Europe.”

  “That’s because we currently rely upon foreign nations to manufacture our resources,” Alexander said, denouncing the circumstance at mind-numbing length before concluding, “We send timber, flax, hemp, cotton, wool, indigo, iron, lead, furs, hides, skin, and coal—our warehouses in the harbor are overflowing—but we will always be dependent until we can produce our own goods.”

  I gave him the indulgent smile I’d learned was the best response to his brilliance, if I ever hoped for his lecture to end. But Angelica seemed to actually enjoy these dissertations, and later gifted my husband with several books of economics as reward.

  Angelica felt no compunction against going to Fraunces’s on Pearl Street, where Congress had rented space to debate whether or not they had sufficient power to form commercial treaties that would bind every state. And when I wondered if her husband minded or if this wouldn’t be looked at askance, she said, “The women in France do anything they like! Why, they are more avid on the subject of politics than their husbands.”

  Knowing Angelica was to go on to Albany to see our family and then to Philadelphia before taking her leave of America, I didn’t want to share her with my friends and acquaintances. But they all clamored for her. Theodosia insisted we bring her to dinner, and it was no surprise that the equally outspoken and audacious Angelica and Theodosia got on like old friends. Likewise, Kitty Livingston’s sister, Sarah, married to Mr. John Jay, pleaded with us to come to tea, where all the ladies gossiped about the prominent bachelors in town. Naturally, some of the talk was about Monroe.

  “Those gray eyes—”

  “That dimpled chin!”

  “That brawn. But Monroe is no great intellect; he’d be quite a nobody without the patronage of Mr. Jefferson . . .”

  “That’s not true,” I insisted, rising to his defense. Then I reminded them of Monroe’s war heroism and service to the country until I was weary.

  And I was weary, because I couldn’t keep up with Angelica. My sister was an indefatigable socialite. She accepted every invitation, holding court at every party.

  So the night my ten-month-old daughter was spitting up and Angelica pouted because her husband’s being out of town on business meant she ought not go without me, I said, “Alexander will take you.”

  And so they went, Alexander stumbling back into the house in the wee hours, complaining that my sister out-drank him, and retching over a chamber pot as he vowed that he would never imbibe champagne again.

  I thought nothing of it until the next day when, while shopping with Angelica for sundries in the marketplace, we came upon James Monroe in the shade of the awning of Mr. Mulligan’s tailoring shop, in less than congenial conversation with m
y husband.

  I didn’t wish to interrupt, but my sister twirled her parasol and fearlessly cried, “Hamilton! I need to arrange for a sloop up river and you’re just the man to help.” Angelica laced her arm into the crook of Alexander’s elbow, as was her habit, but, to my surprise, my husband let his arm fall away in a most ungentlemanly fashion.

  Some manner of dark look passed between him and Monroe that I couldn’t comprehend. “Is my husband meddling in politics again, Congressman?” I asked with a smile to Monroe.

  Monroe’s jaw tightened, as if I’d asked him a very difficult question. But before he was able to offer an answer, he was nearly accosted by surly citizens who wished to complain about the latest debate in Congress.

  As I departed the scene with Alexander and Angelica, she glanced over her shoulder with disgust. “What bumpkins. I don’t see what you find so agreeable in Monroe. He’s far too comfortable with the tobacco-chewing rabble in their knit caps crowing about liberty, while insisting anything beautiful or enjoyable must be banned lest it destroy our revolution and deliver us into the clutches of monarchy.”

  She wasn’t entirely wrong about the rabble. But I believed her to be entirely wrong about Monroe. “He’s a man of relatively modest means, but he’s no leveler,” I said.

  Monroe proved it when, later that week, he joined us all at the long-awaited reopening of the John Street theater. But while our merry band of companions looked for seats in the gallery—Baron von Steuben insisting on a seat for his dog—I sensed Monroe’s discomfort around our friends. “You’ve been so quiet, Monroe. Unusually so, even for you. What weighs upon your mind?”

  At that, his gray eyes lifted and met mine. “I’m leaving New York for a time.”

  I was sorry to hear it. Discounting that one strange moment outside Mr. Mulligan’s tailoring shop, Monroe’s presence and friendship had buoyed my husband’s mood and made us all very happy. And I did not wish to part with him. “For how long a time will you be gone?”

  “Three or four months, I would reckon. Long enough to see all there is to see out west.”