My Dear Hamilton

by Stephanie Dray

  I nodded, starting to come back to myself, the pain easing. “Thank you, Dolley.”

  “You poor thing. You must be worried for your husband.”

  I blew out a breath, torn, perhaps ridiculously, between worry over my unborn child, and worry over admitting to the wife of a political rival that I was concerned about my husband’s expedition against the whiskey rebels.

  “I’m sure everything’s all right,” I said, trying to convince myself on both accounts. For I had now only the slightest of cramps.

  I wanted to say more. I wanted to confide my worries to her. And I nearly convinced myself that I should. After all, Dolley and I had been friends before she met Madison. And I did hold a glimmer of hope that she might be a good influence on him politically.

  Especially now that Mr. Jefferson had retired into private life. Hamilton feared that this retirement from President Washington’s cabinet was just a ruse, that Jefferson was biding his time until he could run for the presidency himself.

  But to me, the important thing was that Jefferson was gone.

  In Jefferson’s absence, Madison had supported my husband’s whiskey tax. Jemmy also denounced the insurrection as odious. So maybe there was reason for optimism that fences could be mended with our old friend.

  Still, I knew better than to confess anything that might be used against Alexander—even my own fears for his survival. “I think I’ve simply taken a chill,” I added, cautiously.

  “Well, then, I shall let you get your rest,” Dolley replied, tucking a shawl around my shoulders. She seemed to sense my caution, and perhaps was as saddened by it as I was. Before she left, she pledged ten dollars to help French distressed persons, but I feared even charity was too feeble a bridge between us.

  In the days that followed, I was apt to burst into tears without warning or explanation, at the slightest provocation. Or no provocation at all.

  What’s wrong with me?

  I worried that like one of those pendulums with which Papa was so fascinated, swinging back and forth, there was a divine balance of happiness afforded to any one person. God had spared us. He had spared Alexander and me from death, divorce, and bitter acrimony.

  Will the price for that mercy now be the life of the baby inside me, or the life of my husband at war?

  If Angelica had been with me, she would’ve said I was ascribing altogether too much importance to myself in the plans of the deity. And I dared not confess my fears to anyone else lest they think me mad. Certainly, I couldn’t confess them to Lady Washington, or Abigail Adams, or Lucy Knox—all of whom, in warm shawls and dowdy bonnets, mounted an assault upon my household in near military formation even though I protested I was too sick to receive them.

  Determined to combat my malaise, Mrs. Knox hovered above my bed and huffed, “Parsley is just the thing.”

  “Strong tea is better,” insisted Mrs. Adams, elbowing her way forward.

  “Dried figs,” Lady Washington serenely stated, setting a basket of them at my bedside. “Figs ease everything for a pregnant woman.” And though I could see they did not agree, the other Federalist ladies were forced, out of deference, to bend to the president’s lady. “Don’t trouble yourself about the children, my dear,” Martha Washington insisted, patting my hand. “I will take little Fanny and Ana in my carriage to dancing school so you can get your rest. All will be well.”

  But by the time Alexander returned, victorious over the rebels, having restored order to the country and banished the specter of the guillotine, I had delivered a tiny, misshapen, dead babe.

  It would have been a girl. A little girl. I’d hoped for another daughter. A third sister for Ana and Fanny to love. The two of them were already inseparable, but I’d imagined them, the three of them, piling into a bed together and laughing like Angelica, Peggy, and I used to do.

  And now I couldn’t be consoled of the loss.

  Not even when Alexander burst in the door, clasping me in his strong arms.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry.” I wept violently against my husband’s chest. “I lost her. I wasn’t strong enough to keep her.”

  Alexander rocked me, tears in his own eyes. “Blame your heartless husband for leaving you. My absence was the cause. It’s my fault, my beloved, my angel, my Eliza . . .”

  He was not heartless; he was a hero. He’d saved the country, yet again. The rebellion was smashed. The primacy of federal laws firmly established. The government had passed its first test. And yet, when we put quietly into an unmarked grave my dead child who couldn’t be baptized nor named, I couldn’t find enough patriotism within myself to feel anything but grief.

  “She’s cold,” I whispered, awakened by the ghostly cry of an infant echoing in my ears. “In the ground. She must be so cold.”

  I started to rise, as if to go to her, but Alexander pulled me back into his arms. “No, my love. She’s with her creator now.”

  Icy tears trailed upon my face. “She never felt me hold her. She must’ve been frightened . . . and alone . . .”

  “You held her,” he whispered. “You held her inside your body. She wasn’t frightened, my angel. Not while she felt the strength of your love. And you must believe me, for who knows the strength of that love better than I do?”

  Having never lost a child before, I couldn’t fathom the grief. Or that I would feel anything other than grief ever again. “I feel shattered. Broken in pieces.”

  “I’ll hold you together,” he said, making a bed for me of his whole body. “For once, let me hold you together.”

  I let him rock me as I whispered my most secret fears. “I took this child for an embodiment of grace and love and forgiveness, and now she’s gone. What if this is the end of us?”

  “This is not the end of us,” Alexander said, taking my face in his hands. “I have tendered my resignation to the president. I am yours forever, Eliza. And I will never leave you alone or desperate again. I will not let this be the end of us. This is the beginning.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  You may judge how much Hamilton must be mortified at his loss of influence such that he would descend to the language of a street bully.

  —EDWARD LIVINGSTON TO HIS MOTHER

  Summer 1795

  New York City

  FLOWERS. IN THE five months since he’d left the government, my husband filled my world with flowers. Cut hot house hyacinths in winter. Sunny daffodils from Mama’s garden during our visits to the Pastures. Azaleas at the Pinkster festival. And now the riot of purple aster, red roses, and orange lilies of New York’s Vauxhall Gardens where we strolled with our children.

  “Buy your sisters ice cream,” Alexander called after Philip while balancing three-year-old Johnny on his shoulders.

  Running wild amongst the gravel paths between the flowers and sculpted shrubbery, our children were happy to have returned to New York. And I was, too. Some part of me would always long for the countryside, but my husband’s legal trade was a city occupation, and there could be no better city than this one.

  To me, New York City was a more hopeful, energetic place than Philadelphia. Certainly, I felt better here—the riverside walks and musical concerts and frenetic pace had been a balm for and a distraction from my grief over our lost child.

  I was not, of course, the first woman to lose a baby. My mother and my sisters had endured the same. But I’d lived so blessed an existence that it was, to that point, the worst pain of my life, and through it, Alexander had held me together, just as he promised. He’d let me rage. He’d let me cry. He’d let me question, even, the mercy of God. And it was through my husband’s unfailing strength that I forgave myself for having ever worried that another child would be too much burden.

  When I save enough money, I’ll build you a country house, with a flower garden all your own, he promised. With room for all the children and more besides, if God should see fit to bless us with more.

  Meanwhile I found contentment with what we had. And now, watching my husband
spread a picnic blanket beneath the shade of a statue near the orchestra pit, I felt like a cat purring in a warm patch of sun. I unpacked our basket as the musicians tuned their instruments with “Yankee Doodle,” and I marveled at how well Alexander carried his forty years. Though his auburn hair had gone silver at the temples and his nose seemed a bit sharper, my husband was still handsome and distinguished, and mine in a way he’d never been before.

  “Is there something wrong, my angel?”

  “Nothing at all,” I answered, tearing off a chunk of bread for Johnny. “In this moment, I feel as if there is nothing whatsoever wrong in the world . . .”

  “Then I’m doubly sorry to tell you that your boy is about to topple that wax figure of a Roman general,” said a familiar voice, and we looked up to see the wryly amused visage of Aaron Burr.

  Sipping at a lemon ice, Burr accompanied his polite twelve-year-old daughter, Theodosia, who took so much after her mother that it allayed some of the wariness her father’s presence unleashed in me.

  “James!” my husband shouted after our eight-year-old troublemaker, while Burr and his daughter settled onto a blanket beside us to wait for the sun to set and the fireworks to begin.

  “Welcome home, Senator,” I said, determined to keep the conversation friendly.

  Burr nodded in polite acknowledgment, having returned recently from a special session of Congress in Philadelphia, where he’d done his utmost to undermine President Washington and everything my husband had put into motion.

  At least Washington remained to defend the Federalist cause. When we’d said our farewells to the Washingtons, my husband with true respect and affectionate attachment, me with a teary and grateful embrace for Martha and one of awe for the great man, I knew the president’s continuance in office was the one thing that allowed Alexander to retire. The reason he could be here with us now.

  We remained on cordial terms with Burr if only because he still worked with the Manumission Society to help free blacks from being snatched up on the streets and sold back into slavery in the southern states. Still, I couldn’t keep myself from twitting him. “I’m afraid we missed you at the dinner in honor of my husband hosted by the Chamber of Commerce.”

  “Ah, well, yes. I was sorry to miss it,” Burr managed, clearly attempting to play nice as well, though we all knew he’d have been pilloried by his own political party if he’d attended. The merchants of the city had given Alexander a hero’s welcome, celebrating us with champagne, a feast, and a ball. Well-wishers pressed into the overcrowded ballroom to listen to my husband’s mercifully short remarks on the virtues of the city’s businessmen. And they’d cheered, three times for Washington, three times for Adams, and nine times for Alexander Hamilton.

  However vilified my husband might’ve been in Philadelphia, he was still New York’s favorite son. And I was quite sure Burr took my meaning.

  Clearing his throat, he changed the subject, “I hear your law practice is thriving, Hamilton.”

  “I’m kept quite busy, thank you,” Alexander replied, and he wasn’t boasting.

  After a few months of riding and fishing and hunting with my father and our sons upstate, Alexander had decided that vacations disagreed with him entirely. In fact, he blamed this leisurely sojourn for the loss of his bank account book, which mortified him, since he’d created the bank that issued it. He’d since become convinced that he might lose his faculties altogether if he let them rest, so he’d thrown himself into the enterprise of paying off our debts and rebuilding our fortune.

  “It’s a good strategy,” Burr said, sipping the last of his lemon ice.

  “What is?” Alexander asked.

  Burr stretched upon his checkered blanket. “Temporary retreat from the political arena. Retirement is very fashionable these days amongst men who wish to be president . . .”

  How relieved I was to hear Alexander laugh. “That’s Jefferson’s game. As for me, I’m about the care of my family now. Congratulate me, friend, for I am no longer a public man.”

  “Exactly what a man would say if he wanted to be president,” Burr replied. “You’re wise to let John Jay take the blame for this treaty of amity, commerce, and navigation he’s forged with the British. Then sweep in after it passes in Congress and reap the benefits.”

  Almost in spite of himself, Alexander asked, “You think the treaty will pass?”

  “Perhaps,” Burr said. “But I can’t vote for it. Not if I want to remain a senator. It’s too unpopular.”

  Sensing a coming debate, I said, “Gentlemen, I beg you not to spoil the evening.”

  Reluctantly, they obliged me, and a lovely time was had by all. Philip, Ana, Fanny, and Theodosia—all four of them close in age—shared ice cream upon a blanket and stared up in marvel at the fireworks overhead. And nestled against Alexander’s side, I felt happy as I hadn’t felt in years.

  Which was why, I think, I was so vexed the next evening to find Alexander pacing in the airy entryway of our rented town house on Broadway. “There’s a French flag flying atop the Tontine Coffeehouse.”

  “A French flag over the Tontine?” I asked, in mock outrage. “Well then. Henceforth, we shall take our coffee elsewhere . . .” Which would be a trial, since I loved the Tontine.

  Alexander, however, was not to be mollified. “A French flag hoisted blocks from my door! Next, I suppose, it will fly over the city instead of our Stars and Stripes.”

  “I’m sure it is only a protest against Great Britain. If we must choose a side in the European war, the people would choose our first ally. France.”

  “We mustn’t choose any side,” Alexander said, wearing a hole in the floor by the window. “It’s not our war. Even if it was, we can’t win another war. We can’t afford it. And war would prevent the Tontine from selling their coffee, the fools.”

  Giving him a peck upon the cheek, I said, “Fortunately, it’s no longer your worry.”

  We had plans for the theater, after all, and it was time to dress. Now that he’d returned to private practice, we could afford new clothes, and I was eager to see him in his new double-breasted white waistcoat and dark breeches, worn loosely as was now the fashion. But he continued to pace like an angry lion. “To see the character of our government sported with tortures my heart.”

  “I know, my love,” I said, patiently guiding him toward the stairs.

  He took two steps before stopping again. “Am I more of an American than those who drew their first breath on American ground? How can everyone else view this so calmly?”

  As someone who drew first breath upon American ground, I defended myself. “I don’t view it calmly, but you cannot keep writing treatises for the president as if you were still in the cabinet.” He scowled, but since our marriage was now on a more equal footing, I dared to scowl back. “Oh, did you think you fooled me into believing the scribbling you’ve been doing late at night was for some legal case?”

  For a moment, his eyes blazed with indignation, as if he meant to deny it. Then his bravado gave out. “You think I’m a fool—a romantic Don Quixote tilting at windmills.”

  “I think you’ve already accomplished everything you set out to do.” It was not flattery. He’d fought and won a war and built a federal government. He’d created a coast guard, a national bank, and invented a scheme of taxation that held the states together. He’d founded a political party, smashed a rebellion, and put in motion a financial system that was providing prosperity for nearly everyone. In short, Alexander Hamilton was a greater man than the country deserved, and I wasn’t enough of a patriot to willingly give him back.

  Especially not when I saw what my countrymen were doing to poor John Jay.

  There was not a street corner one could pass without hearing some raving Jacobin denouncing the man for his controversial treaty, which antifederalists feared prioritized closer economic and political ties with the British monarchy over support for French republicanism and therefore repudiated American values. Damn John Jay. Damn ev
eryone that won’t damn John Jay. Damn everyone that won’t put up lights in the windows and sit up all night damning John Jay.

  After the treaty was signed, Jay was—as he told us himself—burned in effigy in so many cities that he could’ve traveled the country at night with nothing to guide him but the light of his own flaming form. My poor cousin Sarah Livingston Jay had reason to fear leaving the house. And this could’ve been our fate, I knew. My husband had narrowly missed being sent to negotiate in Jay’s place, had already resisted an attempt to make him a chief justice, and was daily forced to dismiss rumors that he should throw in to be the next president of the United States.

  So, I was unspeakably grateful that my husband no longer held any office. And yet, he was still giving speeches. Which was how, while I sat trying to mend a pair of Philip’s shoes he’d outgrown, my now nearly fourteen-year-old son came to ask, “Can I go watch Father speak in favor of the Jay Treaty?”

  Quite against the idea, I said, “Your father isn’t likely to say anything that you haven’t already heard at the supper table. And I dislike for you to be by yourself in a crowd.”

  Philip made a sound of exasperation. “At my age, my father was his own man, in command of a trading firm.”

  Your father was an abandoned boy trying to make his way in the world with any job he could get. This is what I wanted to say. But Alexander never wanted his children to know the scars of his youth; he only ever wanted them to see him as heroic. And I wanted them to see him that way too. Especially Philip.

  So, if my son wanted to see his father give a speech, I could scarcely deny him. Besides, it was only a five-minute walk to Federal Hall from our new lodgings. “We’ll go together. There’s a new shoemaker near Wall Street,” I said, giving up on mending the old leather. “If we leave now, we’ll be in time to see your father’s speech on the way back.” When Philip grinned beneath the down of a burgeoning mustache upon his lip, I added, “Now change clothes so you look like the fine young gentleman you’re becoming instead of an urchin.”