I, Eliza Hamilton

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “It’s only brave when a woman does it, Eliza,” she said. “No one thinks twice of a gentleman making a similar trip. I made the journey in the company of several of John’s associates, and never once felt frightened or ill at ease.”

  She paused in the doorway to survey the bedchamber under the eaves that had been mine alone until now. Her trunks had already been brought upstairs, and stood waiting on the floor to be unpacked.

  “So I see we shall share a room once again, Eliza, and a bed with it,” she said, walking the length and breadth of the small room in a few quick steps. “Will you share your secrets again as well, dear sister? Will you tell me everything in your heart, as you used to do when we were girls?”

  She smiled at me and turned about quickly, making the petticoats of her scarlet riding habit flare dramatically around her ankles. But then, that was how Angelica did most everything, with drama and a perfect confidence that all others about her were watching. They did, too, for she was impossible to ignore. She was a fraction taller than I (or appeared that way) and handsome rather than beautiful, but it was her style, her wit, and intelligence that drew others to her.

  When Angelica had showed promise as a child, Papa had obtained a tutor for her as if she were a boy, and she had learned to speak French like a Parisian, read Latin like an Oxford don, and could discourse with ease on male topics such as politics and economics. She had always aspired to be one of the accomplished ladies in London and Paris who attracted brilliant company to their drawing rooms, whilst I had always held humble aspirations, dreaming instead of a house filled with laughing children rather than philosophers.

  I will, however, hasten to note that there was never any animosity between us, despite what scandal-mongers later whispered. We were as different as sisters could be, yet still we loved each other with the warmest bonds of our blood. Only a year separated us, yet Angelica had always played the role of older sister to the hilt—though to be honest, I’d been equally content to stand starry-eyed in her grandiloquent shadow.

  But on that April afternoon, I gave no thought to any of that. I was only happy to have Angelica before me.

  “Much has changed in our lives since you left to marry,” I said, which was true. I had been nineteen when she’d eloped, and was twenty-two now, and at that age three years seems an eternity. “I cannot even recall what secrets we exchanged beneath the coverlet at night.”

  “Which proves how closely we kept them.” She pulled off her black hat, cocked like a man’s, and shook the raindrops from it as she sat on the edge of the bed. “But I care more for the present than the past, Eliza. Come, and tell me of the dashing and splendid Colonel Hamilton.”

  She stripped off her yellow kid gloves and straightened her gold rings, two on one hand and three on the other, another sign of her husband’s wealth. She patted the coverlet invitingly, and I happily sat beside her.

  “I’ve told you most everything in my letters,” I began. I folded my hands in my lap, then consciously drew them apart. I’d forgotten how being in Angelica’s company could make me feel a bit prim, and I was determined not to do it again. “Colonel Hamilton is handsome and clever and more charming than any gentleman I’ve ever met.”

  “Oh, Eliza.” She clucked her tongue with mock dismay, and tipped her head to one side, her dangling gold earring swinging lightly against her cheek. “Mamma has told me that much. I’d hoped you would share something regarding the colonel that only you would know.”

  I nodded solemnly. It wasn’t that I couldn’t think of any of the special qualities that I alone saw in him—his kindness, his gentleness, his laugh, the way he’d caress my breast above my gown and how he’d kiss me until I was breathless, and a hundred other things besides. But I realized that to share these little endearments would take something from the love we shared. I now owed my allegiance to Alexander, not to my sister, and I volunteered nothing.

  “That is all, Eliza?” she said, disappointed. “Is the gentleman so much a saint that he hasn’t a single quirk or foible?”

  Still I kept silent, with only the April rain drumming once against the window.

  “Well, then, a saint he must be,” Angelica said with resignation. “I shall be forced to judge him for myself.”

  That resignation made me feel guilty, and at last I spoke.

  “Kitty Livingston says he is too charming by half,” I said, “which leads him to make fast friends, but also lasting enemies.”

  “That’s scarcely a flaw,” Angelica said thoughtfully, shifting her weight to sit more thoroughly on the bed. She had a way of scowling that made her appear as if she were sitting in judgment, and to see that scowl now made me uneasy for Alexander’s sake.

  “I don’t believe it is, either,” I said bravely. “But Kitty said it, and she has known him longer than I.”

  “Yes, but Kitty Livingston is also something of a fool,” Angelica said succinctly. “The fellow who makes no enemies usually has only boon companions in place of real friends. To have both enemies and friends proves the colonel to be a man of convictions and beliefs. He sounds quite intriguing.”

  “Oh, he is, Angelica, he is!” I exclaimed with relief. “I’m certain you will like him. I’ve spoken often of you to him, and he is eager to make your acquaintance, too. If he can be spared by His Excellency, he’ll call here this evening, after we dine.”

  “I’m sure we shall become fast friends,” she said, and smiled slowly, her dark eyes watching me shrewdly. “You’re mad in love with him, aren’t you, Eliza? It’s painted bold across your face.”

  Her smile was so filled with affection that I realized all over again how much I’d missed her, and how glad I was to have her here now.

  “I am mad in love with him,” I declared boldly, borrowing her phrase. “I don’t care if the whole of Christendom knows it, too.”

  “I’m glad, because the whole of Christendom will see it at once,” she said. “I always kept your secrets, Eliza, but you never could keep one from me. Now bring on your pretty colonel, and let me decide if he is worthy of you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  As eager as I was for Alexander and my sister to meet, circumstances—and the dignitaries from abroad—prohibited it for several days after Angelica’s arrival. He was in demand at headquarters from the moment he rose in the morning until whenever His Excellency finally released him at night, which was late indeed.

  One of Alexander’s most valuable talents was his fluency in the French language. His late mother had spoken little else to him as a child, and as a result he could not only converse with the nuance of a native Frenchman, but also compose letters and other written documents with ease. Almost sheepishly, he claimed that he’d no real separation between English and French in his thoughts, and that one language was much the same as the other to him.

  To me who spoke only English and a smattering of Dutch learned from older relatives and from church, Alexander’s facility in French was a marvel, and another mark of his genius. To His Excellency, however, who likewise spoke only English, it was an imperative.

  While the French ambassador had brought an interpreter with his people, wisdom dictated that each party have their own for the sake of impartiality. Alexander served as interpreter for the Americans. But the French interpreter proved more familiar with the strict English spoken in London palaces, and found our rustic version difficult to comprehend. Alexander was called upon to answer every conceivable question for the visitors, from describing the assorted rifles and muskets employed by our troops to explaining the humble fare that His Excellency was forced by necessity (and to his embarrassment as a host) to serve his exalted guests.

  But Alexander was employed for a more somber occasion, too. Joining the French minister was Don Juan de Miralles, a gentleman of distinction from Spain who was likewise interested in the American cause. Alas, poor man, he was stricken with a severe biliary complaint that defied the best efforts of the surgeons to relieve, and after great suffering, he
perished in his bed at the headquarters. In his last hours, Alexander was able to offer him words of comfort and sympathy in his native tongue.

  When he described this sad scene to me later, I expressed my surprise that he spoke Spanish as well as French.

  “It’s not often of use here in New Jersey,” he said with a cavalier shrug, as if yet one more singular accomplishment meant nothing. “When I was a boy, I took my first studies with the Sephardim children on our island, and from them I learned Spanish, and Hebrew besides. If His Excellency ever entertains an emmisary from the Levant, I’ll doubtless be called into service then, too.”

  “Wasn’t there a Christian school for you to attend instead?” I asked in my innocent ignorance.

  “There was,” he said evenly. “But because my parents weren’t married, I wasn’t permitted admission to the Anglican school.”

  I gasped with indignation on his behalf. “How un-Christian of them! To punish a child for the sins of the father!”

  “Since my father was no longer in evidence, I suspect it was more the sins of my poor mother that they wished to punish,” he said. “The Sephardim were considerably more forgiving.”

  As always whenever he revealed more about himself, I listened in fascination, and pity for the outcast little boy he’d once been. It was as much about how he spoke, however, as what he said: without any shame or regret, but simply as a matter of fact. Other men would have buried such a childhood behind half-truths or not mentioned it at all, but Alexander didn’t do that. He swore that he cherished the truth, and there was no finer example of his honesty and lack of any perfidy than this. No wonder I loved him all the more for it.

  While I didn’t share all of his past with Angelica (that was his to tell, not mine), my proud description of his learned accomplishments only increased her impatience to meet him. I was every bit as eager, for I longed for these two whom I loved so dearly to be as pleased with each other as any true sister and brother might be. I felt sure it must happen, with even Fate conspiring by making their names so similar: Angelica and Alexander, both beginning with the same letter and with the same number of syllables.

  Yet when at last they came together in the same place, it wasn’t in our house, and it wasn’t nearly as fortuitous as I’d hoped. Instead this fateful meeting occurred outside the chamber shared by His Excellency and Lady Washington, and where that good lady received her friends and acquaintances. Since I’d arrived in Morristown, I’d been honored to become a regular visitor. Each week, I joined my mother, my aunt, and Lady Washington as we sat with our handwork and conversed genteelly, pretending we were still in our own neat drawing rooms in our various homes and not in a military encampment.

  It was my mother’s idea to include Angelica, so she, too, might pay her respects to His Excellency’s wife. Now my sister was not given overmuch to needlework, but she did wish to be presented to Lady Washington as the first lady of our young country. Angelica was also vastly amused at the notion of visiting headquarters, where the men so outnumbered us women, though she was also wise enough not to voice it to our mother. I was myself always conscious of that fact, and took extra care with the neatness of my dress because of it whenever I visited Mrs. Ford’s house.

  There was no mistaking my sister’s love of an admiring male audience as she swept through the front yard to the house in her bright red habit. Angelica had countless ways to draw the male eye, small gestures and mannerisms that made her impossible to ignore, exactly as she wished. I couldn’t begin to emulate her, nor, really, did I desire that kind of attention, but it was a wonder to watch her effect on most every soldier and officer we passed.

  “How cheerful everyone is, Eliza,” she said to me as we sat waiting on the bench outside Lady Washington’s chamber. “From your letters, I thought all I’d see were long faces and grim miens, but everyone here is exceptionally agreeable.”

  “Hush, Angelica, not so loud,” Mamma said mildly, not truly scolding. “Recall how I cautioned you to be discreet. In these close quarters, everything you say here may be heard, and repeated.”

  Angelica smiled, unperturbed, as she smoothed the leather of her gloves. “I only said that everyone was exceptionally agreeable, and where’s the harm in that?”

  “There isn’t any,” I said, daring to agree with my sister over our mother. “Not at all.”

  Mamma only sighed and shook her head with the resignation of mothers with grown daughters. But I didn’t care, for I was more occupied in glancing about at the usual crowd of officers, visitors, waiters, and servants that crowded the upper hall, hunting for Alexander. Word spread quickly through the house whenever I called on Lady Washington, and if Alexander could be spared from his duties, he’d appear as surely as if I’d summoned him myself.

  Today was no exception. As soon as I saw his familiar golden-red hair (glossy with pomade and clubbed with a black bow, but not powdered) appear over the edge of the landing as he bounded up the stairs, I smiled, and I was smiling still as he hurried toward us. He was looking exceptionally handsome today, dressed in the new uniform he’d recently had made. His Excellency liked his Family to be as spruce in their attire as he was himself, and he’d grown so unhappy with the motley state of his aides’ uniforms after the winter that he’d had a tailor brought to the camp from Philadelphia for a general refurbishing. Now Alexander stood resplendent in a new blue and buff coat with double gilt buttons and epaulets, fresh breeches and waistcoat of cream-colored corded dimity, and the light green sash of an aide-de-camp. He cut the very figure, and I could tell from the way that my sister drew back her own shoulders beside me that she’d taken notice, too.

  “Mrs. Schuyler, your servant, madam,” Alexander said as he bowed dutifully before my mother, always taking care to address her first.

  He turned next to me, his eyes instantly so full of love that I felt it as surely as if he’d embraced me outright.

  “Miss Elizabeth, my own,” he said softly, taking my hand and lightly pressing my fingers. That was all he said, and all he needed to say. There was nothing sweeter to my ears than my name on his lips, and I loved that he wasn’t embarrassed by showing affection to me here at headquarters the way many men would have been.

  “We’re here to call upon Lady Washington,” I said, my own voice turning breathless as it did whenever he was near, even whilst delivering this most mundane explanation. I was so rapt in the simple pleasure of his nearness that I nearly forgot my sister’s presence beside me, and would have, too, if she hadn’t shifted pointedly beside me as a reminder.

  “Colonel Hamilton, may I present my sister, Mrs. John Carter?” I said. “Angelica, Colonel Hamilton.”

  My sister held her hand up to him, and reluctantly he abandoned mine to take hers. But before he spoke, she addressed him first, and to my enormous surprise, she did so in French.

  “Enfin, enfin, le fameux colonel Hamilton!” she said, her chin raised at the perfect beguiling angle. “Je vous ai tellement entendu parler des lettres de ma soeur, que j’ai l’impression de vous connaître déjà.”

  He frowned, yet he answered her in kind, without the slightest hesitation.

  “Bonjour, madame,” he said, bowing over her hand. “Que je suis enchanté et honoré de faire la connaissance de la soeur de ma belle, bien-aimée Eliza.”

  I stared, speechless. I could comprehend his name and my own, but beyond that none of what they said meant anything to me. My sister was beaming at Alexander as if this were all delightful, while Alexander continued to frown politely, if such a thing were possible. What had she said to him? How had he replied? I’d never before given much thought to learning French or any other foreign language—I’d not the patience for it—but in that moment I would have given much to have been able to understand what had just occurred. Uncertainly I glanced from my sister to Alexander and back again, desperate for any clues as to the meaning of their conversation.

  “Je comprends tout à fait pourquoi ma petite soeur est si dévouée à
vous, monsieur.” Angelica delicately slipped her hand free from his and with her fingers smoothed a lock of her dark hair (which did not require smoothing) around her ear. “Votre charme ne con-naît aucune limite! Quelle chance—”

  “In English, Angelica, if you please,” Mamma interrupted with a touch of irritation. “My grasp of French is slight, and not so firm as once it was.”

  “Pray forgive me, madam, I’d no intention of being so ill-mannered,” Alexander said contritely as he bowed again to my mother. “When Mrs. Carter addressed me in that language, I returned her compliment without thinking. It was barbarously wrong of me—”

  “It was wrong of me, Mamma, and I claim full blame,” Angelica said, though with none of Alexander’s contrition. “I should not have led Colonel Hamilton into that impolite snare.”

  Now I wondered exactly what he had said that required so much apologizing, that he called “barbarously wrong” and she described as “impolite,” with my name in the middle of it.

  “Forgive me, Mrs. Schuyler, I am the one, and not Mrs. Carter, who is entirely at fault,” Alexander began again. I knew how much he valued my mother’s good regard, and her rebuke, mild as it had been and in no way intended toward him, must have cut him to the quick. His usual ease in company had deserted him, and his cheeks had turned endearingly pink, the curse of his fair complexion. “There was nothing impolite in our conversation. That is, ah, I am certain—”

  “No one is to blame for anything,” I said quickly, rescuing him and absolving them both, even as my own confusion continued. “What pleases me is that you discovered so much in common worthy of conversation.”

  “What we have in common, my dear little goose, is you,” Angelica said, looping her arm fondly into mine. “I told Colonel Hamilton that because of your letters, I felt as if I knew him already, and he in turn told me how honored he was to meet at last the sister of his beautiful, beloved Eliza.”