My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  He turned me to face him, and his eyes were an ocean storm. “Before we married, madam, I asked you countless times if you could be happy—”

  “As a poor man’s wife, yes. And have I or the children once complained? That is not my concern, Alexander,” I said, my heart aching that he would question my loyalty.

  “Then what is?” But he didn’t allow me to answer before sitting up and charging on. “I’ve shed blood, Elizabeth!” Though he burned hot, he wasn’t often a man to shout, but the moment I mentioned the little ones, something seemed to have snapped in him, as if he felt I’d impugned his honor as a father. “I’ve killed men in the cause of this country. And how shall I answer my children—or God for that matter—if it should all be for nothing?”

  God? That he—who had only reluctantly consented to baptize our children at Trinity Church—should fling salvation at me!

  You are not the only man who shed blood in the cause of this country, I wanted to say. And having been forced so often to listen to chatter about forms of government, I knew the point of a republic was that nothing should rest entirely upon one man. Surely the whole enterprise would not fall to pieces simply because thirty-four-year-old Alexander Hamilton did not have command of its accounting books.

  But I didn’t say any of this for fear he would bury me in an avalanche of arguments. Instead, I kept quiet, and what he mistook for submission seemed to ease him. Heaving a breath, he pulled me to him again. “My angel, the treasury is where I can do most good for the country. And this consideration must outweigh every consideration of a private nature.”

  It was a reminder that I was a general’s daughter. A colonel’s wife. That ours was a family that had led soldiers in the cause of the country and must see it through troubled times to safety.

  Perhaps I was more saintlike than I’d wanted to admit, because I found myself softening to the one approach that had the power to cut through my anger—patriotism. Moreover, I knew what a godly woman would do. A saintlike woman. She’d resign herself to the will of her husband and master, and devote herself with resignation to his decree. Besides, if Church could stop loving Angelica, who was so charming and agreeable that she’d fascinated royalty, how easy might it be for Hamilton to stop loving me?

  Suddenly, the hurt I felt that he hadn’t consulted me felt petty, so I didn’t give voice to it. Not when I wished to right the wrong I’d caused between us. I gave a little nod. “Of course, Alexander. I understand.”

  His expression softened and he fastened those irresistible eyes on me. “This position is what I’ve been hoping for—planning for—all along.”

  And all at once I knew it was true. All those treatises on economic policy. All the late-night conversations with Papa and the powerful financiers of New York. All the books on economic systems. All those times Hamilton had gone off to war or to Philadelphia and left me alone for months on end—or even when he was so absorbed in his work that he didn’t look up for days.

  I’d been planning our domestic life together.

  But he’d been planning this. And it made me realize I still had so much to learn about my husband’s ambitions.

  Chapter Twenty

  June 1789

  New York City

  WELCOME TO THE menagerie,” I said to James Madison as a cacophony of our chickens squawked in their pen in the yard. There were advantages to living across the street from the busy Federal Building—for example, when my husband left the house to attend business there, he wasn’t far—but it was also too easy for him to return home with colleagues.

  One hot summer afternoon when my daughter was shrieking at the top of the stairs because one of her brothers had taken her ribbon, I was obliged to receive Mr. Madison. As I wrangled the children, he glanced out the back door—propped open to permit a cooling breeze—and asked, “Is that—”

  “The neighbor’s monkey,” my husband answered, with more gravity than I would’ve expected. He led his friend into the yard for the shade of a tree. “It keeps climbing over the fence to taunt the chickens.”

  I watched the men settle themselves, fretting over Alexander’s pensiveness. And I took them some lemonade. “Is anything the matter?”

  The men exchanged a glance that made my stomach drop. “Washington has fallen ill,” Alexander said, glumly. “They say it’s anthrax. I worry for the man, of course, but more than that, too. What comes of the Constitution if he dies?”

  Madison’s expression was equally grim. “The crisis this could bring about in our public affairs may be insurmountable.” It was already bad enough, he explained, that our countrymen were getting into tavern brawls over whether we should prefer to trade with the British or the French. The only thing everyone agreed on was George Washington. “If Washington dies, we’re to entrust the whole enterprise of the federal government to a man lambasted as His Rotundity, the Duke of Braintree?”

  John Adams, he meant. And yet, was the possibility of the president’s death not the entire purpose of having a vice president? So my prayers, when I made them, were not for the Constitution. I prayed for the president and for Martha Washington. Because how would she bear it if her husband were to die?

  Leaving the men to talk, I sent Jenny to fetch more water and cut lemons to fill a pitcher for more lemonade—all this before greeting Angelica at the front door and hefting fourteen-month-old James into my lap to nurse.

  I told my sister the news, then shook my head. “Mrs. Washington must be frantic. I should like to visit her to offer comfort or assistance.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Angelica said.

  But I wondered if a visit with the president’s lady was truly possible. Because Mrs. Washington’s position meant that things had changed between us. At her receptions, I always found the president’s lady seated atop a dais, her round face smiling benevolently down upon us from beneath a modest powdered coiffure and lace veil. And there she regally received each lady in turn.

  The first time I’d seen her that way, I realized, with a start, that Martha Washington and I might never again be easy and familiar together. She was the closest thing we had to royalty. There must be a distance now, I thought, almost sadly. And as I made my way to the dais to present myself, I’d been acutely aware that I’d never attended a royal court. I hadn’t known how low to drop or how long I ought to hold the curtsy. In the end, I’d grasped my skirts and endeavored to a posture between obsequiousness and mere respect, hoping, quite sincerely, that I wouldn’t somehow teeter off my embroidered silk shoes.

  Much to my relief, when I rose, Mrs. Washington’s smile had widened. Almost a secret message just for me, as if to reassure me that a friendship remained. But that friendship would never be the same because she was now, more than ever, a public figure. Every gesture and smile a reflection upon her husband until the day he died, which I prayed would not be soon.

  “President Washington simply must recover,” Angelica decided, making herself helpful by brushing little Fanny’s curly hair. “And he will. At the inaugural ball he looked as strong and vigorous as ever. So right now I refuse to worry about anything but you.” She nodded toward the babe at my breast. “I don’t know how you manage all this. And you’re expected to host a dinner tonight besides?”

  I nodded, eyeing a gown piled atop the chair that I needed to mend before I could wear it. “Some gentlemen are coming to arrange for the care of Alexander’s legal practice when he takes up his new position.”

  Angelica sighed. “This won’t do. It’s too much for you without more servants. It’s too much for Jenny. It isn’t seemly for the wife of such an important man to scrub floors next to her maid. It wouldn’t be fitting for the president’s lady to stoop to it.”

  In light of the current crisis, I could scarcely imagine such a position. Certainly, I didn’t want to imagine it. “I am not the president’s lady.”

  “But you might be, one day,” my sister replied with a sly smile.

  My mouth went dry, for the situati
on cast Angelica’s comment in a too-calculating light that made me uneasy. And it was more proof that, though I was coming to better understand my husband’s ambitions, sometimes it seemed as if my sister sympathized with those ambitions more than I did.

  I didn’t want to be the wife of the secretary of the treasury, much less the president’s wife. And I shuddered to think I might ever find myself in Martha Washington’s position. Especially given what she was facing now.

  Perhaps sensing my panic at the idea, Angelica sighed and said, “Oh, Betsy. You blanch when you should blaze! If Hamilton must entertain, have him take his guests to my lodgings where servants can wait upon them as befitting the household of a great man.”

  Oh, the relief of that idea. I couldn’t deny that the elegance of my sister’s household was more in keeping with expectations—to say nothing of the absence of children, chickens, and monkeys.

  Though, on this particular afternoon, with such grave news hanging over our heads, the monkey looked to be having a salutary effect on the men. For when I went out to refill their glasses, I found my husband and Mr. Madison, heads close together, laughing and teasing the creature as it swung from the tree by its tail and pelted them with leaves.

  “Where did the little devil come from?” Madison wanted to know.

  “Our neighbor won the monkey from a sailor in a card game,” my husband explained.

  “A British sailor or a French sailor?” Madison asked, archly, as if ready to come to fisticuffs about it. Whereupon they both laughed before their conversation turned to finance and Alexander’s upcoming position—topics that had me retreating back into the house.

  The next afternoon, Angelica and I tried to call upon Mrs. Washington, only to be denied access, as I feared. The street had been roped off so that carriages would not disturb the president’s rest. I returned home early, dejected, only to find the house strangely empty and quiet.

  “Jenny?” I called, but when I had no answer, I guessed she must have gone to the market.

  It was too soon for Alexander to be home, and yet, from up the narrow stairway, I heard my husband’s voice, soft and tender, speaking of love.

  Not stopping to remove my hat and gloves, I climbed the stairs and cautiously pushed open the door. There I found Alexander seated on the floor of our bedroom, rocking little Fanny in his arms where she slept, his lips pressed to her hair as he murmured that he would love and care for her.

  “What’s happened?” I asked. “Has she fallen ill, too?”

  Hamilton didn’t look up. Perhaps he couldn’t. “Her father is dead.”

  Oh, poor orphaned girl! I didn’t ask how. I supposed it didn’t matter. What did matter was that my grief-stricken husband looked nearly as broken and vulnerable as when he’d received the news of John Laurens’s death.

  His voice catching, Alexander said, “Her sisters are still too young and impoverished themselves to take care of her. I know it’s too much to ask . . .”

  I knelt and pressed my forehead to his. “You needn’t ask. We’ll keep her. We’ll love her as our very own. Why, with those bright black eyes of hers, Fanny could pass for my daughter.”

  He peered at me, tearily. “I fear it’s too much of a burden on you, my love.”

  “A small burden when compared to the ones you shoulder,” I said.

  For it was in his pain for this little girl, and the obligation he felt toward her, that I finally understood his calling. Not just to help provide a future for the child of one fallen comrade, but to provide for the children of all of them. The ones who had been orphaned in a war he helped unleash, in battles he helped plan, and mutinies he put down. He was, I knew, trying to keep the promise he made to make this a better world.

  And, I felt sympathy for all that my husband was trying to do.

  Fortunately, by the grace of God, the skill of the doctors, and the stoic disposition of the president, George Washington survived his ordeal that summer. But the scare made us all realize how much the country needed this man.

  And I embraced the fact that the country needed Alexander Hamilton, too.

  * * *

  With special trust and confidence in the patriotism, integrity, and abilities of Alexander Hamilton of the City of New York in the State of New York, I have nominated, and by and with the advice and consent of the senate, do appoint him Secretary of the Treasury of the said United States.

  —GEORGE WASHINGTON

  September 13,1789

  New York City

  Dinner parties and balls filled our evenings, now that Alexander was a member of Washington’s new cabinet, and at every one I reveled in having Angelica’s tutelage in becoming the socialite wife of an important man. I studied my sister as she conversed in French, made literary allusions, shared gossip—always the gentlest kind—and carried herself with an air of dignity and charm.

  And while the wit and guile of society would never come as a natural talent to me, I began to understand it as a craft that could be practiced. Especially when I had such a good and loving teacher as my sister.

  But our celebrations were abruptly cut off by a pair of unexpected blows.

  After seven months in New York, Angelica received word that her children were ill. Frantic to hold her babies in her arms—even if it meant returning to John Church—my sister made haste to sail back to England. An ocean would again separate us, and she’d be in her husband’s grasp. He could keep Angelica from us forever if he wanted. That was a husband’s power.

  And I was devastated to think I might never see her again.

  “Take heart, my angel,” Alexander said, to soothe me. “Your sister wants to live here in America, near to us. And she is precisely the sort of woman who knows how to get her way.”

  He meant to make me laugh at the idea that it was Angelica who would make Church bend to her will, as she so easily bent everyone else to it. But I couldn’t even smile. “What if her ship is lost? What if—”

  A thousand calamities seemed possible. But I cut myself off from expressing any of them when my sister’s carriage pulled up in front of our house. I did my best to dry my eyes, wipe my tears. But when she’d finished kissing all my children farewell, Angelica drew me aside and smoothed at my cheeks with her thumbs. “You’ve been crying.”

  “No,” I said, trying to be brave for her sake.

  “I really hoped I’d taught you to lie better than that,” she said, a little teary herself. “Your eyes are bloodshot and your nose is red and my heart is breaking to leave you.”

  “I know you must go for your children’s sake, but I’m going to miss you terribly. I’ve been so happy these months. We’ve all been so happy together, and now what will I do?”

  “Now you will shine, Betsy. You’ll become all you were meant to be. You and Hamilton both. And I couldn’t be prouder of either of you. You’re making a new country, and I’m only sorry I cannot stay to be a part of it.”

  Angelica was proud of me. I hadn’t realized, until that moment, how much I had longed to hear it.

  And my lower lip began to wobble until she said, “Oh, you really must stop looking at me that way. You’re going to make me cry, too, and it will ruin my powder.”

  For her powder’s sake—and for my own dignity—I didn’t dare see her off at the pier. Instead, we said our farewells in my parlor, and then my husband, young Philip, and the baron took her to the ship. Meanwhile, I retreated to bed, felled with an ache in my heart and my head.

  That night my husband was forced to finish the letter to Angelica that I’d started, sharing in my misery at her departure. As if the loss of her was as genuine a wound for him as it was for me. Which made me love him even more.

  “I fear I’ve lost an ally, not to mention a friend,” he confided one morning soon after.

  Fighting my own fears that I would never see my sister again, I whispered upon our pillow, “She’ll always be an ally. Always your friend. Always your sister, even if an ocean away.”

  With a
huff, Alexander clamored from the bed. “I meant Madison. I would never have accepted this office if I didn’t believe I had his firm support.”

  Jemmy Madison, now not just a congressman from Virginia, but the most influential congressman besides, had unexpectedly pulled his support from Alexander’s financial plans.

  On top of the loss of my sister, Madison’s desertion was as depressing as it was confusing. “Did he say why?”

  “He thinks it unjust that speculators might get a windfall from buying up debt from ignorant country folk, but that’s just how investment works. He’s letting Jefferson’s ideas about the nobility of the simple yeoman farmer sway him away from financial reality.”

  Jefferson had only recently returned from his post as minister to France to take a new position in the president’s cabinet. But already Alexander was wary of Jefferson’s influence and perhaps he was right to be. Jemmy seemed to idolize his fellow Virginian, with whom he shared a friendship long before we met.

  I had worried, once before, that Jefferson might come between Madison and my husband.

  And it was vexing to think my fears could be coming true.

  How many times had I hosted Jemmy Madison in my home? How many times had I admired his tender touch with my children? He’d become a friend to me. Worse, I realized belatedly, he’d become a brother to Alexander.

  So the relationship simply must be salvaged. Trying to soothe my husband’s temper over breakfast, I pointed out, “Madison opposes only part of your plan, doesn’t he?”

  Hamilton rattled off a list of reasons why even that disagreement was intolerable. “Debt and credit are an entire thing. Every part of it relies on every other part. Wound one limb and the whole tree shrinks and decays,” he said, waving an impatient hand. “No, Jemmy’s opposition to me is a perfidious desertion of the principles he was solidly pledged to defend.”