My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  I had an inkling that Alexander was considering a cabinet position, though he hadn’t shared more than the idea that it was a possibility. Selfishly, perhaps, some part of me hoped he could be content with his private law practice. For public life came with endless outrages. There had been, only recently, a poisonous screed in the papers imputing all manner of villainy to my husband, including infidelity to our marriage bed.

  He will not be bound by even the most solemn of all obligations! Wedlock.

  I thought it an absurd accusation—for even if my husband were a sinful sort of man, where would he find time to betray me? Some days, the man barely slept nor found time to sit for a meal, let alone spend time with his children.

  Angelica came to sit beside me. “You know, don’t you? Well, tell me. What position is he being offered?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, the words uncomfortable on my tongue. For why didn’t I know? “Only that he’s being considered for the cabinet.”

  “I’m not surprised. Washington might be president, but like a king, he’ll need a . . . a prime minister! And who else would it be but Hamilton?”

  Of course, she was right. But tonight, I wished to focus on the celebration, not the reality of governance and the challenges such an appointment would represent for us. “Then that’s even more reason why you must join us at the inaugural ball,” I managed. “And I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Angelica squeezed my hand and winked. “Now that sounded like the commanding voice of a prime minister’s wife.”

  That evening, I dressed in a dark blue gown with painted flowers I’d commissioned specially for the occasion, and we wedged ourselves into Angelica’s hired gilded coach for the short ride down Broadway to the Assembly Rooms. My sister believed a man of my husband’s stature needed to arrive in a grand fashion, and she was probably right. But my mind was unsettled about Alexander’s intentions for our future, and the way my powdered hair, styled very tall, bumped the carriage rooftop with every jolt of the wheels didn’t help.

  By contrast, Angelica seemed at ease, and woefully underdressed. She insisted it was now quite in fashion on the Continent to go with natural hair, wearing the simpler gown she claimed had been popularized by the Queen of France. And everyone was very interested in all things French that summer, since the king had, at Lafayette’s instigation, called together the Estates General to reform France’s government in accordance with the principles of liberty.

  Heaving a dreamy sigh, Angelica told us, “Mr. Jefferson believes that our revolution has unchained the mind of man, and that the whole world is now making itself over.”

  She spoke often, and recklessly, of her flirtation with Mr. Jefferson, boasting to all who would listen how tall he was. How learned and courtly. What a wonderful father he was to his little motherless daughters. Even confiding to us the man’s secret dalliances. Exasperated, Alexander teased that she’d perhaps formed an improper attachment to the man.

  I feared she might take it as a rebuke, but instead Angelica seemed delighted by the suggestion of jealousy in his voice. “Oh, but who can know what is proper anymore?”

  My sister was not the only one to wonder it as three hundred well-coiffed guests all jockeyed for position in the entryway of the festooned ballroom.

  With Mrs. Washington absent, ladies of rank had donned their most exquisite gowns, flashed their jewels, and flaunted their connections to contend for influence and position in this brave new society. Ordinarily, Governor Clinton’s wife would have been next in line to set the tone and protocol for the event. But the formidable Mrs. Knox, wife of the new secretary of war, seemed to believe the honor was hers. Mrs. Knox had been the one to buy the brown cloth for the president’s inaugural suit—all of American manufacture. Mrs. Knox was the one who hosted the party after the president was sworn in, where we watched firecrackers explode in bright, glittering display over the Hudson River. And Mrs. Knox was the one to have insisted upon commemorative gifts—ivory fans, imported from France, each depicting a medallion portrait of Washington in profile between the hinges and elegant paper covering.

  So I was happy to let her have her due, especially at the expense of a Clinton.

  “Oh, how marvelous,” Peggy murmured as she joined us, fluttering her eyelashes behind the fan. “A keepsake to treasure.”

  I used mine to wave across the room. “Mr. Madison!”

  As always, Madison wore black, leading me to worry that the poor bachelor owned just the one suit. His eyes kept darting to the entryway, as if he were reconsidering having come at all, ill at ease in society as he always seemed to be.

  And seeing him fidget as I waved to him, Angelica’s eyes widened. “Oh my. Tell me that pale little creature isn’t the exalted Mr. Madison that I’ve heard you talk so much about!”

  “Be kind,” I whispered. “He’s very clever but very shy.”

  Peggy made a face behind her fan. “He looks like some sort of incorruptible parson.”

  Which made my husband laugh. “A rather apt comparison. That he is uncorrupted and incorruptible I have not a doubt.”

  At last, the bookish congressman made his way through the press and offered a bow. Clapping Madison on the back with enough force to make him cough, Hamilton introduced his brilliant colleague to my sisters. And the mere sight of Angelica seemed to force Jemmy to retrieve a kerchief from his velvet coat with which to wipe sweat from his brow.

  “Congratulations upon your recent election to Congress, Mr. Madison,” I said.

  “Hopefully condolences aren’t in order,” he quipped. “How are my favorite little Hamiltons?”

  That he always remembered our brood of children so tenderly made me ever fonder of him. “Philip can hold whole conversations in French with Alexander and Angelica. I’m quite left out.”

  While Jemmy and I chattered, Peggy sighed impatiently. “Is there no formal order to this reception?”

  Angelica’s gaze searched the room. “I’m told the president’s levees are very formal. Are we to be announced, or curtsy as in a royal court?”

  Madison cringed. “I’m afraid we’re in a wilderness without a single footstep to guide us. And here we are setting an example for the whole world.”

  The whole world. I gulped to think that might not be an exaggeration. After all, no one seemed to know what should be proper in a republic. We were all grasping for ways to behave.

  When the president first arrived in the city, he’d been mobbed with well-wishers, job seekers, former soldiers, and gawkers of all classes and variety. Now people—if well dressed—were allowed into his mansion on Fridays. Out of respect for his own majesty, when the president went out, he did so in a richly appointed buff carriage, pulled by six gleaming white horses and two drivers in presidential livery. But he also made a point of taking a walk every day at two o’clock, to see and be seen on the streets—which, though cleaner since the war, still echoed with the noise of rattling carts, roaming livestock, and merchants hawking their wares.

  We weren’t even sure what to call the president.

  Mr. Adams, in what my husband called a fit of madness, had suggested “His Highness, the president of the United States and Protector of their Liberties.” That had been roundly condemned as having the foul stench of monarchy about it. And perhaps because the antifederalists dared not criticize George Washington, they turned their merciless venom on Vice President Adams, addressing him as “His Rotundity” and “The Duke of Braintree.”

  Just then, the hall broke into applause when Washington appeared at the front of the room, Adams standing beside him. Before a backdrop of gold stars upon a blue field, the president offered the shortest of possible welcomes, as if he were embarrassed by the attention, then gave a nod that bade the musicians to play.

  With the majority of revelers looking on, Washington led a minuet. Alexander turned to me, holding out his hand. “Shall we?”

  Finding Angelica and Peggy in animated conversation, I readily accepted, a
nd soon we were moving through the formations. The crowd and low-hanging crystal chandeliers quickly heated the room, and the wax was still warm when it dripped down onto our shoulders from the candles. And I became acutely aware of the envious stares of ladies, all of whom, it seemed, wished to dance with my handsome husband.

  They whispered behind their fans, tittered when he came near, and one of his young female admirers was so entranced that she did not notice that one of the chandeliers had set fire to her ornate ostrich feather headdress until one of the president’s aides clapped the feathers in his hands to rescue her.

  “Ask Angelica to dance next,” I said to my husband when our set came to an end.

  He kissed my hand. “As you wish.”

  I’d no more than sipped at a cup of punch when President Washington appeared beside me. “Mrs. Hamilton,” he said, his tone formal as ever.

  “Good evening, Your Excellency, and congratulations.”

  “May I have the pleasure of this dance?” Washington asked with a little nod.

  A most brilliant entertainment indeed! “Oh, it would be an honor.”

  The president pulled me into the center of the dance floor and guided us through the figures of the minuet with his characteristic dignity and grace. And all the while I felt the weight of hundreds of gazes—congressmen, cabinet officers, foreign ministers, and those of their wives and daughters—and my conversation with Angelica came rushing back. Had President Washington singled me out because he intended to make my husband one of his cabinet officers? The thought caused me less anxiety than it had before—for, knowing that Washington and his lady were leaving behind their beloved home at Mount Vernon to serve this country again, I could hardly argue that Alexander and I shouldn’t reconcile ourselves to a lesser sacrifice.

  When the music ended, the president bowed, and I beamed. Especially as my sisters ran up to exclaim over the mark of respect he’d paid me. “Mrs. Prime Minister,” Angelica whispered, probably too loudly, considering that we were suddenly encircled by ladies with whom I had only the most sparing acquaintance.

  Except for my old friend Kitty Livingston.

  Though we hadn’t often spent time together since Morristown, I was pleased to see her now. “Kitty!” I cried, at first surprised that she’d come to town for a visit without telling me. Then altogether startled when she turned her back, as if I were a stranger. “Kitty, have we been so busy with our lives you’ve forgotten us?”

  All at once, Kitty whirled upon me in a swirl of pink-striped satin, eyes burning with anger. “I haven’t forgotten anything. Unlike your husband, who forgets who helped him get his start in this country. My family introduced him into society, but I suppose he has new friends now . . .”

  “How appallingly rude,” Peggy spat at Kitty.

  Kitty turned on her. “Rude? And yet you were the one jesting loud enough for everyone to hear that Mrs. Church would like Hamilton to become a knight of her bedchamber.”

  Peggy’s mouth dropped into an oval. “I never said any such thing!”

  Meanwhile, my cheeks heated at the insult of being confronted this way in public. “Kitty, I—I don’t know what you mean by any of this.”

  “Pay her no mind,” Peggy said, linking our arms and attempting to pull me away.

  “Yes, you do know what I mean,” Kitty accused, placing herself in our way. Even more malevolently, she added, “Then again, you’ve always made it your business to remain unaware of anything you didn’t wish to be aware of, Betsy. So let me explain. Your father, who is certain to get a Senate appointment, promised that your family would support my cousin for the other Senate seat. But now that Hamilton is to command the nation’s treasury, he’s violated the agreement and thrown his weight behind some . . . upstart.”

  With a rustle of her skirts, Angelica interposed herself between us like my guardsman. “Oh, but Kitty, you’ll put a wrinkle in your forehead worrying about politics! Let the men sort it out while you tell me where you found this divine pink robe.”

  Never before in our whole lives had my older sister been content to leave politics to the men. In fact, Angelica was, in her own dulcet way, performing a political act by trying to divert the conversation. And as striking as that was, what most stood out to me was Kitty’s certainty that Alexander was to be appointed treasurer. How did she know that when I did not?

  Kitty was not distracted by my sister’s diversionary talk of fashion. “As always, you Schuylers stick together. But remember, so do the Livingstons.” With that, Kitty flounced away.

  “She must have misunderstood something,” I murmured, my head spinning as I turned to Peggy. “What was she on about anyway?”

  Angelica gave a wave of her fan. “Much ado about nothing. I dropped a garter during the dance, and Alexander gallantly swept it up and returned it to me. So of course I teased that in America he can’t be a Knight of the Garter.” She grasped me by the shoulders. “Pay Kitty Livingston no mind. With power and influence comes jealousy, Betsy.”

  “Yes,” Peggy said, quickly. “Don’t let her upset you.”

  “I won’t,” I said. On any other night, I might’ve fretted about the confrontation, but I refused to do so on this night—not when we’d worked so hard to get here, and not when I wished to cheer Angelica, and certainly not after President Washington had done me such an honor.

  Peggy sighed, and I followed her glance in the direction of Governor Clinton. “But your husband does have a penchant for making powerful enemies.”

  “He has to,” Angelica replied. “It’s the way of the world. You can’t rise in station without something, or someone, to step on. With Papa now in the Senate, and Hamilton possibly leading the new treasury department, our family is in ascendance. The Livingstons will simply have to learn to cede to their betters.”

  * * *

  “MRS. HAMILTON,” MY HUSBAND purred against my neck. “You were tonight, as you were in Morristown all those years ago, the belle of the ball.”

  I peered at him in the mirror of my dressing table, where I sat removing my pearl earbobs. Despite the unpleasantness with Kitty, the ball had been thrilling, and I was both exhausted and exhilarated. The grandness of the occasion, my husband’s unfailing attention, the liveliness of the society—and the dance with our country’s new president. It had all been a delight. We deserved this celebration, this moment, this joy.

  “The belle of the ball? Is that so, Colonel Hamilton?” I asked coyly.

  His very warm hands moved to my embroidered stomacher. “It is.”

  I sighed. “And yet, when the rooster crows, the children will awaken and I shall be transformed to a simple Dutch housewife once again.”

  “Then I’ll make good use of the hours between now and the rooster,” he said, playfully pulling a pin from the fabric and carelessly letting it drop upon the mahogany table with a soft plink.

  “Alexander.” I shifted toward him, my blood heating with the feel of his breath on my nape. Fleetingly, I worried about the possibility of conceiving another babe when I already had an orphaned Fanny and four of our own little ruffians underfoot, all so close in age. And yet the erotic edge in his voice, and the scent of brandy on his breath, made it impossible to resist.

  “Careful,” he said, plucking another sharp pin. “Except for that first rapturous instance upon our nuptials, I would not wish our trysts to be bloodsport . . .” He dragged the point of the pin harmlessly over my bodice. I felt quite at the mercy of his sweet assault in a way that made me feel more lover than wife. One pin led to another, and before long the whole gown was in pieces at my feet and my husband’s touch drove away all my worries.

  Afterward, Hamilton held me in his arms in the quiet dark of our bed. “The president wishes to appoint me secretary of the treasury.”

  So, there it was. Finally.

  I swallowed as competing reactions fought to be voiced. I was proud, of course, but also worried about how we could manage as his duties became more demanding. As it w
as, he was so often gone, leaving me almost always alone to bear the heavy burden of our domestic responsibilities—not just the children but also our occasionally insufficient means.

  But even more, and perhaps ridiculously, I nursed a little ache that he was only now telling me something others already knew. Going back to our little shack at De Peyster’s Point, he’d always brought me into his work. I’d helped him in the writing and publishing of The Federalist. So I suppose I’d taken the liberty of thinking that we were partners in the enterprise of his career.

  “That’s a great honor, husband,” I managed. “Am . . . am I the last to know?”

  Alexander blew out a breath and pulled my back to his chest. “I didn’t wish to concern you with it until the details were confirmed, and now they are.”

  So it was decided, then. It was a decision that would determine my future, and the happiness of my family, but I wasn’t consulted as a partner would be. I was told. And it made me feel childish and naive and small, not like the prime minister’s wife, which I was to be, after all.

  “I should like to have known you were considering it,” I murmured, knowing Robert Livingston also wanted that job, and if it went to my husband it would create an even deeper rift between our families.

  “You know why,” Alexander said, frustration causing his voice to rise. “I brought this government into being and I’m now obligated to put the machine into some regular motion.”

  It didn’t escape my notice that he hadn’t actually responded to what I’d said, and that turned my hurt to resentment. “May I ask the salary?”

  “I predict about thirty-five hundred dollars.” It was so far below our already stretched income that I feared to take a breath. Perhaps sensing my panic, he said, “It is a financial sacrifice, I know.”

  “No. I don’t think you do know.” I’d kept the burden of that knowledge from him, well aware of how he resented dependency. So while he went about accepting payments from clients in barrels of ham and sending money to his ungrateful and dubious relations in the West Indies, I’d made certain that he didn’t know about the loans from Papa or the extra shipments of food from Mama. Dinner came to his table on plates given to me by my sisters, and he never asked how it got there. Alexander didn’t know how I patched clothes for one child to pass down to another, how I stretched our stores of root vegetables from season to season, or how I traded homemade preserves and table mats in exchange for wine to serve important guests.