“Has anyone told you what has happened this morning in Elizabethtown?” he asked, and I nodded. Doubtless he could tell me more, much more, of fortifications and skirmishes and a thousand other military niceties, but I didn’t want these to be the last things I heard from him.
“I know you must go there, too,” I said, rushing my words to say them all before he left. “I know you’ll be brave and honorable and—and everything else you must be for the sake of our country.”
“My own Betsey,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Then you know I’ve no choice but to go.”
“You’ll go because you cannot wait to fight with the others.” I tried to smile, but my mouth seemed unable to turn upward the way I wished it to. “All I ask is that after this day, this battle, this war is finally done, you’ll come back to me, because we have so much to do together. Will you promise me that, Alexander Hamilton? Just—just take care, and come back.”
He didn’t answer, but instead drew me almost roughly into his arms, lifting my feet clear from the ground, and we held each other so tightly I wished that we’d never part.
“I love you,” he said, a promise warm against my ear. “My angel, my love.”
“I love you, too,” I said, “and I always, always will.”
Another moment that went far too fast, and then he was gently easing himself apart from me. “I must go now.”
“Go,” I echoed sorrowfully, my open palm still on his breast. “May God be with you, my love, and keep you safe.”
He paused and smiled. “You always pray for me, don’t you, Betsey?”
“Someone must do it.” Somehow I managed at last to smile through my tears. “I love you.”
“Dearest love.” He kissed me quickly, then backed away from me perhaps a dozen paces before he finally turned and walked purposefully toward his horse.
Left behind, I hugged my arms around myself, a sad mockery of his embrace, and no real solace at all. He swung himself easily up into the saddle, gathered the reins, and settled his hat more firmly on his head. He looked one more time toward me and saluted, and then turned, and was gone. I stood alone and watched him as long as he was in view, and longer beyond that, before at last I too turned away and began on my solitary way.
But to my surprise, this was not to be his final farewell to me that day. Later that evening, I sat sewing with my mother in our parlor. The events of the day weighed heavily upon us both, and when we did speak, we kept our voices low, as if unconsciously fearing that the enemy might somehow overhear us. With all of Papa’s military experience, Mamma wished that he were here with us instead of in Philadelphia, while I missed Alexander’s presence most sorely.
We still had our two sentinels from the army to watch over us, yet both Mamma and I jumped in our chairs and exclaimed with surprise when the knock came on our door. No one would call upon us at that hour of the evening, especially not on this night. Not trusting a servant to answer on a day such as this, Mamma herself rose and I joined her, and together we hurried to the door.
Standing beside the sentinel was a small mulatto man whom I recognized as another of the Washingtons’ servants. In his hand was a letter for me, addressed in Alexander’s unmistakable hand. My mother sighed with resignation and nodded, excusing me, and I rushed upstairs to read his letter in privacy. I couldn’t imagine he’d had opportunity to write today, not on horseback, and not on the first day of a campaign, either.
I slowly and carefully cracked the seal and unfolded the sheet, the way I always did to prolong the pleasure of his letters. This time, however, there wasn’t a letter, but a single line, written in obvious haste:
My dearest Betsey,
I would have given you this myself tonight. Instead let it carry my heart to yours, and love your Hamilton as well as he does you. ~ AH
He’d written that tender closing in letters to me before, a true lover’s admonition, and again its tenderness brought tears to my eyes. He must have scrawled these lines this morning, when he’d believed he’d missed me at headquarters. The servant had become our unlikely Cupid, unable to carry Alexander’s message until after his own duties were done for the day.
But this short note only served as a prelude to a smaller sheet, folded into a tight square within. This wasn’t a letter, either, but a poem, and written out with care.
ANSWER TO THE INQUIRY WHY I SIGHED
Before no mortal ever knew
A love like mine so tender–True–
Completely wretched–you away–
And but half blessed e’ven while you stay.
If present love would show its face
Deny you to my fond embrace
No joy unmixed my bosom warms
But when my angel’s in my arms.
He’d never written a poem to me before. No one had. I read it again, then read it aloud, whispering the words to myself as I imagined hearing them in his voice. I smiled, and pressed my lips lightly to the page, and counted myself the most fortunate of women to love, and be loved, as I was by my Alexander.
* * *
At Papa’s insistence, Mamma and I and our servants left Morristown for Albany two days later. We were accompanied by several guards, but our progress home was without risk or hindrance, and we saw no signs of the troubles that were disturbing New Jersey. The closer we came to Albany, the more Mamma’s health improved as well. I do not know whether this was from Lady Washington’s elixir, or her anticipation at once again being in her own home, or simply the natural progress of her pregnancy; whatever the case, I was glad, and relieved that she was better. If it were not for the uncertainties of the war so close to us, the sunny June weather would have made our journey a pleasurable one.
The remainder of the month was far more eventful for our army, and therefore for Alexander. When people now think of a battle, they imagine a wide and airy field with tidy rows of combatants in gaudy uniforms following a well-ordered plan of attack and defense; much like a game of chess, with the generals on both sides moving their soldiers like pieces about the board.
Perhaps amongst the great powers of Europe, war is conducted with this kind of restraint and order. But in the war here in America, battles were seldom so neat. In fact, to the British officers, the American way of fighting was dishonorable and disorganized, no matter that they soon adopted it themselves. Because General Washington never had the same sheer numbers of men and artillery that the British generals possessed, he often chose to engage the enemy in a manner drawn more from native warriors like the Delawares, the Shawnees, and the Iroquois. Soldiers fought amongst villages and forests, using whatever it was they found to their advantage, or for their defense.
The British attack upon New Jersey that began in early June continued in this manner for several more weeks. I learned of it first from Papa, and then from Alexander, who could write to me only when he found a messenger to carry a letter through the lines to me. The so-called Battles of Connecticut Farms and of Springfield were drawn-out affairs that savaged these towns. The local militia combined with the Continental troops to drive the enemy back to Elizabethtown, and finally again across the river to New York. It was considered a mighty victory for our side, and cheering to His Excellency, the soldiers themselves, and even Congress.
Yet while Alexander wrote in his most exaltatory fashion about these victories (and doubtless also wrote the same in His Excellency’s official reports to Congress), it was the more sorrowful aspect of the fighting that lingered with me.
Many houses in the various villages were burned by the British as they retreated, leaving families homeless and bereft. I thought of how the same enemy had looted and burned my own family’s house in Saratoga this way earlier in the war, and how they showed so little remorse over the destruction of private property.
But there were losses that were far more lasting than mere beams, clapboarding, and bricks. Over the course of the brief campaign, thirty-five soldiers were killed and one hundred thirty-nine wounded
from the ranks of the Continental forces. According to Papa, these casualty figures were quite low, and a credit to the officers who’d taken such care of their men.
I doubted that the families of the soldiers killed or wounded would have agreed. Among those wounded was young Gabriel Ford, shot twice through the thigh. He was the eldest son of Mrs. Ford, whose house had been used by His Excellency as headquarters. I remembered him well, a cheerful youth of promise and a pillar to his widowed mother; he’d planned to attend the college at nearby Princeton in the fall, before he’d become so starry-eyed by the army that he’d volunteered for this campaign. My sympathy lay entirely with his poor mother, who had already lost her husband, and I cannot imagine the shock and sorrow she must have felt to see her beloved son brought home to her bloodied and bandaged.
At least Gabriel Ford was expected to make a full recovery from his wounds. Much more tragic was the tale of Mrs. Hannah Caldwell, the wife of the Reverend James Caldwell and one of our army’s chaplains. During the Battle of Connecticut Farms, Mrs. Caldwell was trapped in her house with her young children and servants as the fighting raged around them. As she huddled with her son upon her lap, a British soldier fired at the window, and killed her where she sat. As her weeping, terrified children cowered to one side, more soldiers forced their way into the house, carrying off the family’s valuables and ripping the jewelry from Mrs. Caldwell’s lifeless body.
Now I am certain that there are those (particularly those whose sympathies lie with the Tory cause) who will say that this heinous act was simply an unfortunate act of war and the cost of our country’s rebellion. But the outrage of it affected me deeply, and I grieved both for Reverend Caldwell and his pitiful, motherless children.
I learned the details of Mrs. Caldwell’s horrific murder (for so surely it must be considered) not from Alexander, but from my friend Kitty Livingston, whose family property in Elizabethtown also suffered much damage at the hands of the British troops. Alexander’s account was far briefer, and I suspect this was because he wished to spare my tender sensibilities from the realities of the war.
But I also suspect that the particulars of Mrs. Caldwell’s death must have affected him, too, and on a most intimate level. As a young boy, both Alexander and his mother had been taken deathly ill of an island fever, such as too often occurs in the Caribbean. His mother perished, while he survived, but he had never forgotten the shock and sorrow of waking to find his mother’s lifeless body on the same bed beside him.
All was a solemn reminder of how tenuous our mortal lives can be, and how quickly gone from this earth. While Alexander himself regretted that he’d not seen more action during the campaign in New Jersey, I thanked God that he hadn’t, and had instead emerged unharmed.
In fact despite the swift beginning to the summer campaign, it soon wizened away with little more real fighting. While the British continued to hold New York and most of the southern states, General Washington and the Continental troops remained idle, waiting for reinforcements. In early July, they arrived: a French fleet bearing nearly seven thousand troops from France, as promised and arranged by Lafayette. The French troops landed to the north, in Newport, Rhode Island, and were commanded by Marshal Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, the Comte de Rochambeau. These Frenchmen were part of an alliance that more than doubled the size of our forces, and most people believed with giddy hope that they would be our salvation.
As can be imagined, Alexander’s ease with the French language made him much in demand as General Washington decided how best to employ the French to break the stalemate with the British and secure victory. But while His Excellency was in favor of the French immediately attacking the British stronghold of New York, Rochambeau disagreed with this plan, and refused to leave Rhode Island. To do so, he argued, would expose the French ships to the larger British navy that still held most of the coast under blockade. Instead of attacking New York, the French encamped in the city of Providence, and prepared to remain there until a plan more agreeable to them was proposed.
Alexander’s frustration was clear in his letters, and I’m sure he reflected the overall mood of the American officers and army. To have the key to victory standing idle in Rhode Island must have felt like the bitterest irony.
But Alexander’s restlessness was not limited to the state of the war. His letters to me, while as loving as ever, also returned to his old fears of being too poor or too humble to marry me. He worried that he was unworthy of me, and painted wretched pictures of how miserable I’d be wed to him and living in some mean little cottage. He told me of dreams (that were better called nightmares) where I had wearied of him, and he would come across me asleep on some grassy hillside beside another gentleman. Even when he’d pay me some sweet compliment—as he did when he called me his pretty little nut-brown maid—there was an undercurrent of uneasiness to it, as if he feared that I’d prove faithless if I were tested like the nut-brown girl in the old ballad. He was acutely conscious, as was I, of the false perception that he was marrying me for my father’s money, and he was resolved that we would live only on what he earned, without assistance from my parents.
I reassured him as best I could, but just as this had been a challenge for me when we’d been separated earlier in the year when I’d been in Philadelphia with my father, and Alexander in Perth Amboy, it continued to be so now. When we were together, I knew what words to use to reason with him and to calm his doubts, and which little caresses and endearments would act as balms to the wounds he insisted on inflicting upon himself.
But I seldom found a way to do this with pen and paper, and his own ease with words only made my lack the more noticeable. The difficulties of sending and receiving letters on account of the war made our correspondence even more labored. Letters were often delayed, with some overlapping and losing their meanings, or on occasion even misplaced entirely. The only consolation was his teasing promise to punish me for all my delinquencies in writing—a punishment which I knew from pleasurable experience would be meted out in kisses, and was so little real punishment that it nearly inspired me to cease writing altogether.
Still I persevered, because even a jumbled letter to Alexander was a way to express my love and regard and desire to him. Although we couldn’t yet choose an exact date for our wedding—that would depend on when His Excellency could spare Alexander long enough to come to Albany—we knew it would be in December. We shared our impatience to be wed, and each summer day that slipped past was one less that we’d have to wait.
I’d ways enough to occupy myself. As usual our house was filled with the cheerful confusion of my five younger brothers and sisters as well as their various friends and pets, and as promised, Angelica arrived with her two dear little babies as well. With my mother often weary from her pregnancy, I took over many of the burdens of our household’s management.
I prepared for my new life, too, as every good Dutch bride would. For the remainder of the war, Alexander and I would likely live not in a house of our own, but in quarters hired for the use of officers and their wives. Whatever I brought to my new household must be easily packed and conveyed, and ready to shift at a moment’s notice. I proudly marked linens—sheets and pillow biers and towels and washing-cloths—with my new initials, and took a special delight in every tiny cross-stitched EH that I made in blue thread. My mother and I together assembled all the sundry pieces necessary to begin a household from candlesticks to iron pans and pots for the kitchen, soaps and kettles for the laundry, and coverlets and hangings for our bedroom.
Because of my future status as wife to the senior officer of His Excellency’s staff, Mamma also insisted that I have new clothes, from stockings and fine linen shifts to silk gowns to wear for evening entertainments. Perhaps I should have relished such lavish expenditure on my behalf, but in truth it made me uncomfortable.
“Mamma, please, no more,” I said as we paused outside yet another mantua-maker’s shop. “I don’t need anything else.”
She
frowned. “There’s the question of a new winter cardinal,” she said. “You wore your old cloak so often last winter in Morristown that it’s grown quite shabby.”
“But you and Papa have bought so much—”
“We wish you to begin your marriage with everything you need,” Mamma said. “We would have done the same for Angelica if she’d chosen to inform us of her attachment to Mr. Carter before she married him.”
The truth was that Angelica hadn’t required any of this, having married an increasingly wealthy man who had bought her all this and a great deal more, but I wouldn’t say that to Mamma.
“You know that Alexander worries that he is too poor to marry me,” I said. “He’s sure to see your gifts not as generosity, but that you doubt he is capable of supporting me.”
“I’ve heard this fretting from you before, Eliza,” Mamma said firmly, “and I’ve no wish to hear it again. Yes, you may be marrying a gentleman who is at present impoverished, but your father and I are confident that through his industry and resourcefulness, he will soon remedy that.”
“I believe that, too,” I said, not wanting her to think I lacked confidence in his abilities. “But it’s the present that concerns him, not the future.”
“It shouldn’t,” she said bluntly. “While you may become a poor man’s wife temporarily, you remain at present a rich man’s daughter, and I won’t have your aunts and cousins believe we have slighted you when they arrive for the wedding.”
Thus, I had no say in the matter, nor did Alexander. My mother was a difficult woman to cross, as I tried to explain to him as best I could. At least I’d other things to write in my letters to divert him more agreeably, things that even he could not complain of.
He had suggested that I employ my time in reading, something I hadn’t previously been inclined overmuch to do. As I’ve noted before, I was not Angelica. But because it was his wish, I began—and finished!—several books he’d recommended that were in my father’s library: works by James Boswell, Jonathan Swift, and Laurence Sterne, among others. It was not easy work for me, but Alexander praised me much for the accomplishment, and in later years, when we would have learned guests at our table, I was proud that I’d read books they mentioned, and could therefore share my own opinions.
I, Eliza Hamilton Page 15