Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton

by Tilar J. Mazzeo

  When Eliza returned home for a summer visit in June, not long after Stephen Van Rensselaer’s return to Albany, she walked into a household rocked by chaos.

  Peggy was determined to marry, and she would turn twenty-five in the autumn. Finding a husband, even for a rich and pretty young woman, was far from certain. Seven years of war had translated into the death of a generation of young men, and in America in 1783 there were 120 would-be brides for every hundred-odd eligible gentlemen. Eliza’s favorite cousin, Kitty Livingston, was both older and richer, and she still hadn’t managed to catch a husband. Twenty-five was practically an old maid, and Peggy saw her window quickly closing.

  Stephen Van Rensselaer was a scrawny young man. He had high, dark eyebrows; a long, thin nose; friendly eyes; an easy laugh; and extremely deep pockets. His fortune still ranks today, centuries later, as one of the largest ever in American history. He liked to drink fine wine and, like Peggy, enjoyed boisterous dinner parties.

  Stephen arrived home from Harvard in June and, still enchanted by his feisty older cousin, promptly proposed marriage. Peggy, in no mood to turn down any suitor, accepted with great alacrity.

  General Abraham Ten Broeck, the teenage patroon’s uncle and guardian, exploded with fury. Abraham was Philip Schuyler’s oldest and dearest friend, since their earliest days at school together, but Stephen was too young to be thinking of marriage, and it all looked very opportunistic on the part of the lady. Philip Schuyler agreed entirely and promptly took matters in hand by calling off the engagement, forbidding his daughter from accepting the proposal, and packing the entire family off to remote Saratoga for the summer, where, the burned-out summer house still in ruins, there were only tents for accommodation. That, Abraham and Philip agreed, should cool the young man’s ardor.

  The problem with the young patroon’s marriage, everyone agreed, was not Peggy Schuyler. The trouble was the youth of a teenage Stephen Van Rensselaer. In a few years, when Stephen had come of age and was no longer a minor, when his fortune was his to manage, and he had found his sense of himself as a man and estate master, then, of course, no one could object to one of General Schuyler’s daughters, even “wild Miss Peggy.” If Stephen felt the same way at twenty-two or twenty-three, the path was open. If. After all, crushes came and went, and young men were often fickle.

  But in three or four years, Peggy would be approaching thirty. If the rest of them had missed that fact, Peggy certainly hadn’t.

  Peggy Schuyler was not about to wait years to see if the young man changed his mind and risk losing her certain chance to get a husband. Their unfortunate cousin Kiliaen Van Rensselaer was pressed into duty as a secret messenger, despite his protests, and Stephen set off in a boat for Saratoga. Peggy carefully folded a mauve silk gown, worked with an overskirt of damask flowers, and some of her nicest bits of lace into a satchel and, when the signal came, slipped away from their summer encampment and down to the river with her suitor. The next morning, Peggy got her wish. They eloped and were immediately married. No minister in Rensselaerwyck was going to refuse the patroon.

  When Peggy was missing in the morning, there was little doubt as to what had happened. Philip and Kitty Schuyler heard the confirmation of the marriage that afternoon, and this time they were more disappointed in their daughter than enraged or worried. But Abraham Ten Broeck was furious, and Philip Schuyler sympathized with his old friend in his anger. He knew what it was like when a disobedient child ran off on the sly to marry. Philip still thought that Angelica’s husband was a cad and a fraud. John was even now masquerading as late as 1783 under his assumed identity as “Mr. Carter” to shirk responsibility.

  Stephen Van Rensselaer was kin, part of that interconnected web of Dutch landowners, and the lord of a vast feudal manor that reached for miles around their hometown of Albany. Scandalized letters flew in the weeks that followed, and Cousin Kiliaen was in an especially uncomfortable situation. “Stephen’s precipitate marriage has been to me a source of surprise and indeed of regret,” one friend wrote him. “He certainly is too young to enter into a connection of this kind; the period of his life is an important crisis; it is the time to acquire Fame, or at least to prepare for its acquisition. . . . Our friend has indulged the momentary impulse of youthful Passions, and has yielded to the dictates of Remorseful Fancy.”

  Stephen would regret it, the locals tutted. Some went further and said that Peggy Schuyler, facing down spinsterhood, had taken advantage of the impulsivity of a young man to catch a husband.

  Peggy didn’t care. Let the gossips moan and flutter, she thought. She was tickled when Alexander nicknamed her “Mrs. Patroon.” Stephen had no regrets either. He was young, hopelessly rich, and reasonably handsome. He drank far too much fine wine, he sometimes gambled, and he reveled in flirtatious women and raucous parties. Peggy—always the impulsive Schuyler girl—was smart, funny, haughty, beautiful, and she never tired of dancing. And he was in love with her. The couple promptly moved into a mansion in the center of Albany.

  Did Eliza, in Saratoga with the family for the holiday, know of her sister’s plans? It is unlikely that Peggy would have confided in Eliza. Eliza was closer to Angelica than to Peggy. Peggy talked fast and loud, and she had a fiery, explosive temper. Eliza was famously easygoing and thoughtful. Peggy boiled. Eliza simmered slowly. If she had known, Eliza might not have tattled. But she would have tried to talk Peggy out of disobeying Father.

  Instead, Eliza stayed on to console her parents. The situation was an embarrassing one for General Schuyler. What would the world think of a military man who could not control even his daughters? June was wet and cold that summer, and they camped near the hot springs in Saratoga. In the mornings, Eliza walked the land with her father, who was determined now to build a small, two-room summer cottage near the medicinal waters. But tenting in the rain was sure to make everyone ill and bad-tempered, and the damage was done with Peggy. The family returned to Albany, traveling back and forth between the house and camp all summer. Soon Alexander would come to join the family, and then they would travel back south together as a family to Philadelphia.

  But in July, Eliza was still waiting for Alexander to turn up. One letter after another from him announced some delay, gave some reason. Eliza did not like the pattern she saw emerging. She had been waiting what seemed like forever to live in their own house together.

  Other old friends from Morristown were already arriving in upstate New York while Eliza waited for her husband. Saratoga was increasingly famous as a summer retreat, and the tourist population was growing. George Washington, who dreamed of a horseback tour through the Hudson River and Mohawk country, arrived that month to tour the military sites at Saratoga and to look for land in the area to purchase. The end of the war set off a frenzy of land speculation. Real estate—holding, developing, subdividing, flipping—seemed like a certain path to riches, and everyone wanted to get in on the action as prices skyrocketed.

  General Washington brought with him many of Eliza’s old friends—General Henry Knox, General Nathanael Greene, her old flame Richard Varick, and even a recently married Tench Tilghman. His cousin Anna had finally agreed to have him. The house in Albany was full of laughter and celebration. Philip Schuyler, Abraham Ten Broeck, and Peggy’s new husband, Stephen Van Rensselaer, joined the touring party, which as it set off numbered nearly forty.

  On August 3, the military men arrived back in Albany, and Abraham Ten Broeck threw a raucous dinner at a local tavern, followed by a more sedate reception with the ladies of Albany at the Schuyler mansion. Eliza, in her mother’s absence, played hostess. Alexander, still trying to make his way north and acutely conscious of his wife’s growing impatience—and of the fact that he was missing the party—was becoming increasingly exasperated with his mother-in-law, who was traveling up with him and who insisted on visiting New York City.

  Part of what delayed Alexander and his mother-in-law, Kitty, at the end of July was news that brought Eliza sorrow. Angelica and John were
leaving America, and it might be years before the sisters met again. They had seen each other through thick and thin, held each other’s hands during childbirth, and shared their most private thoughts with each other as new wives and householders.

  On July 27, John, Angelica, and their children set sail for Paris. Alexander and Eliza’s mother watched them depart from Philadelphia. John was now a vastly wealthy man. The account books for 1783 showed that he and his partner, Jeremiah Wadsworth, had raked in profits of nearly 35,000 pounds—earnings upwards of a modern equivalent of $46 million. The partners were owed more payments from the French government for unpaid wartime bills, and they were traveling to France to collect. But John Church—still living under the assumed name of John Carter—also wanted to go home to London. He had fled as a bankrupt in disgrace, with the bailiffs hard on his heels, a decade earlier. The scandal of his dueling was long forgotten, and he was now in a position to clear his debts and cancel the warrants. He also wanted to show Uncle Barker that he had made something of himself after all in America.

  When they sailed, Angelica had in tow three toddlers—Philip, Kitty, and John—and she was five months pregnant with a fourth child, who was destined to be born in Europe. A smooth transatlantic voyage meant a month at sea, but the late summer of 1783 was a risky time to travel. Banks of fog and a persistent haze blanketed harbors across Europe and America—the effects of a volcano in Iceland—and Angelica and John were fortunate to arrive safely at the start of September.

  John set off almost immediately to settle affairs in London, leaving Angelica and the children in Paris, and, by the end of October, Jeremiah Wadsworth reported, “Mr Carter has found all his friends and relatives well a most cordial reconciliation has taken place between them and his Uncle is perfectly amended. He therefore assumes his real name John Barker Church.”

  The prodigal son was welcomed home, and, on December 7, Angelica gave birth in Paris to a daughter. “I intended to have called my little girl Eliza after Mr. Church’s mother,” Angelica wrote to Eliza, “but she thinks Angelica is a much prettier name. Mr. Church is also of that opinion, but I promise that the next girl I make shall be called Betsey.”

  By the time Eliza received the news, she and Alexander were settling—at last—into a new life of their own in New York City, in a rented house at 57 Wall Street, near the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, in what was then the urban center of the city, where Alexander now opened a law practice. This would be his postwar career. He had had enough of politics. He would be an attorney. They would raise a big family. He promised.

  Old friends were congregating in New York City in the months after the British evacuation, and Alexander and Eliza’s social circle in the city now was dominated by Alexander’s fellow attorneys, Eliza’s extended network of more or less remote cousins, and other families associated with a controversial fraternity, the Society of the Cincinnati, an elite group of patriot senior officers that some bitterly charged with establishing a new American aristocracy. Among those friends and neighbors in the Cincinnati fraternity, Eliza could count her old flame and attorney Richard Varick; chief judiciary and kinsman Richard Livingston; and Peggy’s patroon husband, Stephen Van Rensselaer, who’d turned twenty-one at last in the autumn and had celebrated coming into his vast inheritance with a riotous house party. Perhaps most ominous, though, was Alexander’s growing friendship with the inveterate gambler and wheeler-dealer William Duer, the man who had introduced John Church to the Schuyler family and who was now married to another of Eliza’s Morristown cousins, Catherine Alexander.

  Alexander was consumed with legal work, political writing, a banking project in the city, and the Cincinnati. He worked long into the night in his office and repaired inevitably after to the nearby Fraunces Tavern. His and Eliza’s lives were increasingly separate.

  Eliza lived largely among other women, children, and servants. Her nearest friends were her cousins, Catherine Alexander Duer and Sarah Livingston Jay, and Marie-Charlotte Antill. All four of the women attended the same Anglican church services at the nearby Trinity Church, and in 1784 they were also all mothers or, like Eliza again that summer, pregnant. Marie-Charlotte’s chubby toddler, Harriet, was Eliza’s special favorite.

  They were all part of the cast of characters in a drama that, before the decade was out, would change life for Eliza and Alexander forever and cause Eliza more grief than she ever could have imagined.

  CHAPTER 9

  New York, 1785–88

  The spring brought unexpected good news. Eliza was jubilant. Angelica and John Church were to return from Paris in 1785, after more than a year’s absence. They arrived in New York City just as a worn-down Marie-Charlotte was giving birth to her twelfth baby, a little girl named Fanny, and Eliza busied herself visiting Marie-Charlotte and trying to help her ailing friend with the houseful of Antill children.

  Eliza’s joy at Angelica’s return was to be short-lived.

  Angelica had arrived knowing that her and John’s return to America was not permanent. John had purchased a large estate on Sackville Street, in London’s Mayfair, near his elderly mother. She was still shocked and surprised, though, to learn that her husband was wrapping up his business interests at a breakneck speed and was planning to leave America for good. Angelica had imagined she would at least have the summer with Eliza and that they might return to Europe in the autumn. John had other plans. He intended, he informed Angelica, to sail back to Britain not after a leisurely family visit but on the next passenger ship. They had just spent an exhausting month at sea. He told Angelica to be prepared to do it all over again after just a few weeks in America. After assigning Alexander, his lawyer, power of attorney, and charging his brother-in-law with the management of his income and property, he booked a hasty return voyage. Like that, they were gone again.

  Eliza was crushed. Her fondest wish was to watch her children and Angelica’s grow up together as friends and cousins, and she missed her sister desperately. She was lonely in New York as a wife and new mother. Worse, the sisters and Alexander understood this probably was goodbye forever this time.

  Eliza was too disconsolate to write, but Alexander put into words both their sadness in August, when Angelica was being tossed and buffeted in a ship somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. “You have I fear taken a final leave of America and of those that love you here,” Alexander wrote to his sister-in-law.

  Unless I see you in Europe I expect not to see you again. This is the impression we all have; judge the bitterness it gives to those who love you with the love of nature and to me who feel an attachment for you not less lively. . . . Your Good and affectionate sister Betsey feels more than I can say on this subject. She sends you all a sisters love.

  Eliza just cried, and when she tried to focus on her needlework her eyes were swimming.

  She turned to Marie-Charlotte for friendship and consolation, but Marie-Charlotte was dying. Complications from the delivery of Fanny had drained her last reserves of strength, and while the infant grew stronger, her mother lay feverish and lethargic until sepsis took her. Edward Antill buried his wife in St. Paul’s churchyard at Trinity parish in the first week of September. Eliza mourned with her friend. A week later Eliza was in the parish again, standing as godmother to both baby Fanny and five-year-old Harriet Antill in a double baptism.

  Alexander and Eliza worried now about the widowed Edward. Eliza’s heart ached for his sorrow and for the darkness that engulfed him. Six of his twelve children were dead. He had buried their thirty-five-year-old mother. Left to him were a half-dozen daughters, for whom he had no dowries, and the ruins of his fortunes. Alexander rallied round the troops, enlisting the men of Society of the Cincinnati to donate funds to support their fraternity brother, but Edward couldn’t lift himself from his depression.

  Eliza took charge in the only way she could. She welcomed into their home her friend’s motherless youngest children. Two of his teenage girls, Mary and Isabella, went to stay with their fathe
r’s family in Albany, where the Schuyler family would be among their support network. But Eliza coaxed Edward into letting Harriet and Fanny stay in the nursery with her two children, toddler Philip and one-year-old Angelica. They needed a mother, these little ones. She promised Edward she would care for them. In the spring, a fifth child would join the Hamilton household. Eliza’s third was born a little boy, named Alexander Jr. after his father.

  It was becoming hard to keep track of the number of children coming and, sadly, departing in the households of the Schuyler sisters by the time of little Alexander’s arrival. Death was a constant presence and held terrors for Eliza. Peggy was the mother of two small children in the spring of 1786, three-year-old Catherine and baby Stephen. Within a year, both were buried. Angelica was the mother of four that spring. She now buried her youngest, a happy ten-month-old boy named Richard. Eliza said a less tragic goodbye, too, to her favorite, little Harriet Antill, who traveled north to Canada with her father. Baby Fanny, though, stayed behind with Eliza and Alexander, and when word came that Edward had died on the northern frontier, Eliza steadfastly refused to abandon the Antill orphan. Alexander did not even try to persuade her.

  When Angelica heard the news of the informal adoption in London, her response was that it was classic Eliza. Any of her own virtues, Angelica wrote to Alexander, “fade before the generous and benevolent action of My Sister in taking the orphan Antle under her protection.” The thought of her children left alone in the world was Eliza’s deepest fear, and orphans tugged at her heartstrings. Orphans and widows.

  By the autumn of 1786, another specter haunted Eliza’s imagination: bankruptcy. Bankruptcy was a crime in the eighteenth century, as John Church had discovered. For families who fell into its grasp, the ruin was complete. Only the luckiest families worked their way out of debtors’ prison in time to salvage a future. Most families were not so fortunate.