I, Eliza Hamilton

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “I will,” Alexander said. “But the first, the very first, I told was you. There can never be anything but perfect honesty between us. That is why I wish you to know that I’ve conducted this affair in the most honorable and just way possible.”

  I nodded, but said nothing more, at a loss. I treasured his honesty nearly as much as his love, but the truth as I saw it was that he should have accepted His Excellency’s offer of reconciliation.

  “You’re worried,” he said gently, turning his hand to link his fingers into mine. “I can see it in your eyes. But this break was long overdue. I expect I’ll receive only congratulations from my friends for having taken it.”

  This was not the case, however, as Alexander learned over the next days and weeks. All of his closest friends had at one time or another been aides-de-camp—John Laurens, Mac McHenry, Tench Tilghman, and Richard Kidder Meade—and should have understood exactly what he’d endured and how he’d been limited. Yet every one of them advised him to make amends with His Excellency, and remain for the sake of the efficiency of the staff. Both Lafayette and my father pleaded with him to reconsider and remain as well.

  Alexander held firm, and would not change his mind.

  When Lady Washington sent me a message the following day, requesting that I call upon her, I went with considerable trepidation.

  It felt odd to be returning to headquarters, knowing what had happened there just the day before, but Lady Washington welcomed me as warmly as ever. She closed the door so we wouldn’t be disturbed, and poured us tea; even amidst the rough hospitality of a winter encampment, she believed in the niceties of porcelain teacups and a silver teapot brought from home. She spoke lightly of the weather, the ice upon the river, and the queen’s stitch covers she was working on canvas, one by one, for the chairs in the dining room at Mount Vernon.

  Then, as I sipped my tea, she finally addressed the subject most on my mind.

  “Dear Mrs. Hamilton,” she began. “I expect you are waiting for me to address the little tift between our husbands.”

  Although I said nothing, my expression must have betrayed me, for she laughed softly.

  “Be easy, I beg you,” she said. “I’ve no intention of scolding or meddling or whatever else you fear I might do. Yes, my husband was unhappy that yours has chosen to leave his Family, and especially by the manner in which the breach has occurred, but he has accepted it, and thus so have I.”

  I couldn’t keep back a gusty sigh of relief. “Oh, thank you, madam.”

  She smiled, stirring her tea with a muted click of her spoon against her cup.

  “There’s no need for thanks,” she said, holding the silver spoon up to drip into the cup. “It was perhaps inevitable, given that they are both gentlemen of strong convictions. Colonel Hamilton will be difficult to replace—I may even be called upon to copy letters! —and my husband will miss his industry and his talents, but I believe this rupture between them may prove to be for the best. While anger is seldom wise in any situation, in certain circumstances it can become a forge in which better things are created.”

  I nodded eagerly. “At first I feared my husband acted upon mere impulse and temper, but I’ve come to see that wasn’t so.”

  “It’s the temper of redheaded gentlemen,” she said, commiserating. “The general and I have been wed for more than twenty years, yet that temper still will startle me, all the more because he is most usually a man of measured kindness and even temperament. The saving grace of such outbursts is that they subside as quickly as they appear.”

  I never thought of His Excellency as having red hair since he was always scrupulous about keeping it powdered in a military fashion. Alexander dressed his hair formally with powder, too, but of course it was my prerogative as his wife to see him in undress, when his hair shown bright.

  “That is the way with Colonel Hamilton as well,” I agreed. “At first, I, too, was dismayed. But the more he explained his decision to me, the more I realized that he had made the one that was right for him, and most in keeping with his own convictions.”

  “Our husbands must make decisions with consequences, decisions that must be thoughtful, thorough, and just, and we must be ready to support them in those decisions when others will not.”

  I nodded again. “None of Colonel Hamilton’s friends have agreed with his decision,” I said wistfully, “yet I’ve come to accept it as the best for him, and for us as well, and he has thanked me for it.”

  “That is exactly as it should be,” she said with satisfaction, “and exactly as I’d hoped you would say it was. We wives of officers are different from other women, aren’t we? We see the terrible burden this war places upon our husbands in the service of our country. All we can do is pray for their welfare, and comfort them as best we can.”

  Her voice was soft and gentle, yet filled with the wise counsel and strength I so needed that I couldn’t keep from sharing my doubts.

  “Oh, madam,” I lamented. Tears stung my eyes, and I looked down at my lap to hide them. “I worry so much about where my husband shall go next! What he desires most is a field command, and even as I agree and tell him I wish it, too, I dread that he may come to grief on some distant battlefield. I cannot fathom my life without him, madam, and if I were to lose him . . .”

  My words broke off, the possibility too unbearable to speak aloud.

  She set her cup down on the table beside her and placed her hand over mine. Her palm was soft, and still warm from the tea.

  “Of course you are afraid for him, my dear,” she said quietly. “Do not believe for an instant that I don’t share those same fears for the general. Life is a fragile gift, and no one sees that more clearly than a soldier’s wife. But you cannot let that fear be your companion, or it will steal away every joy that makes your lives rich. You must trust in the love you share, and God in Heaven.”

  I fumbled for my handkerchief and tried to smile. “That is what Alexander—that is, Colonel Hamilton—says as well. He says I must trust him.”

  “Trust him, yes, but trust yourself as well,” she said. “It’s together that you will be strongest. No matter what your worries or fears, they shall always be much more bearable together.”

  I bowed my head and blotted my eyes, yet nodded. Mamma had given me similar advice before our wedding, and I’d said much the same to Alexander myself. Yet hearing the words from Lady Washington made me once again see the wisdom in this simple message and the truth to it as well. In the future, and in times that tested me most in our marriage, I’d remember it in her voice, soft but firm, and find guidance and solace in the memory.

  Thus in the wake of the argument (or tift, as Lady Washington had called it; others called if a feud, a fight, a battle, a falling-out, but they were wrong, even to this day) between His Excellency and Alexander, I did my best to be strong for Alexander, and I know that he did the same for me.

  So often when he’d erred before, it was his own doing, and he almost always recognized his misdeed soon afterward, causing him to tumble into a dark wallow of recrimination, guilt, and battered pride, which could only be ended with apologies all around.

  In the past, yes, but not this time. I was exceptionally proud of my husband’s demeanor and discretion throughout these difficult days, and the control he exerted over his own temper. As he’d promised, he did not desert his post as an aide at once, as a man driven by pure anger would have done, or announce his departure with vituperative fanfare to the greater world.

  Instead he stayed until replacements could be found, so as not to distress either the general or the workings of the office, and was equally determined to continue as if nothing untoward had occurred. He continued to draft letters for His Excellency and write orders, dispatches, and addresses, exactly as he had done for the previous four years. Further, to preserve the peace of the office, he told only his closest friends of the short-lived quarrel. Many other officers with whom he had near-constant contact through letters and dispatches had no k
nowledge of the rift with the general until he had finally departed the staff.

  There were those among our acquaintance who credited Alexander’s new composure to his marriage to me. I suppose it was, but not in the unflattering way that teasing bachelors meant with their hen-pecking jests. Rather, the incident with His Excellency became something that drew Alexander and me closer together, and which we confronted as husband and wife, exactly as Lady Washington had advised. With me beside him, Alexander truly did seem to have more purpose now, and I—no, we—were the stronger for it.

  * * *

  In early March, Alexander left New Windsor with His Excellency to meet with the Comte de Rochambeau and the other French officers in Newport, in Rhode Island, and to review the French fleet anchored there. The conference had long been planned, and Alexander’s presence was essential. Not only had he drawn up many of the plans for the next step in the war this summer involving the combined forces, but his skill as an interpreter was in constant demand, and he was much respected by the French officers. Few beyond His Excellency himself knew that this would be the final time Alexander would be at the general’s side as his senior aide-de-camp.

  Although he retained his commission as a lieutenant colonel, he no longer had an appointment with the forces stationed in New Windsor, and likewise we no longer had reason to remain in residence there. Until he learned where he would next be posted, I packed our belongings and returned to my parents’ house in Albany. Alexander would join us once he’d completed his responsibilities with the French in Newport. It was a long journey north, but the tedium was considerably lightened by the company that agreed to join me: my Aunt Gertrude and Uncle John, and Lady Washington herself.

  But there was little doubt that we all were in sore need of a change of location from New Windsor, and we had a happy event as an excuse to travel. In February, Papa had written proudly to me to announce that my mother had been safely brought to bed of a little girl. This was my mother’s fifteenth child, born soon after her own forty-seventh birthday, a remarkable feat for any woman. Mamma sounded well enough in her letters, and clearly doted on her newest (and likely last) child, named Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler after herself. I was eager to see my mother again, and to show her how well I was prospering as a wife.

  I was also eager to meet my new little sister, and see which among us she favored. I’d been an older sister as long as I could remember, and perhaps because of that, I’d always adored babies and young children. To be mother to Alexander’s children was a dream I cherished above all others, and I spent more time than was likely wise imagining these unknown little cherubs: would they have Alexander’s golden red hair or my dark eyes, his strong nose or my dimpled chin?

  Babies were much on my mind. Despite Angelica’s assurances, Alexander and I had been married for four months now, and I’d yet to conceive. In Albany, my aunts pointedly surveyed my waistline and made impolite inquiries, and Mamma offered sympathy and assurances that my time would come soon enough, which was almost worse. There were no guarantees. I could consider my parents with their houseful of children, and then look to the general and Lady Washington, who’d not been blessed with a single one. When Angelica wrote that she was expecting her third child, my joy for her condition was tempered by an unseemly regret for my own. My distress and frustration grew as each month passed, and though Alexander, once again with me, tried to make light of it for my sake, I knew that he was every bit as disappointed as I.

  He watched me whenever I held my little sister Catherine, her wobbly small head in a white-work bonnet against my shoulder and my fingers spread to support her narrow back as I cradled her against me. I’d be kissing her forehead and whispering nonsense into her tiny dark curls, and then I’d catch his gaze, and the tenderness and longing I saw in his eyes mirrored my own. It hurt, that much longing for something I might never have, and I had to look away before I wept, and shamed us both.

  * * *

  Although Alexander was no longer an aide-de-camp, he decided that it would be advantageous to remain near to headquarters as he sought his next position. The new lodgings he found for us were less than a mile across the Hudson River from New Windsor on a long finger of land called De Peyster’s Point. By the end of April, we were once again living in a small Dutch house of brick and stone, though this one had a pretty view overlooking the river, with the hills turning green with the new spring. I expected that view would be much less cordial in the winter months, when the wind would blow off the river, but Alexander assured me with confidence that we would be gone to a more permanent home long before then. I was determined to share his confidence, and unpacked only the things we might use each day.

  There was another feature of this house, however, that did not enchant me. Alexander proudly pointed to a boat tied to a makeshift mooring at the end of the path. The boat was included with the house, and further, the house’s owner’s thick-armed sons would be willing to row the boat across the river to New Windsor and back for a small remuneration; the father promised his sons could make the crossing in less than half an hour.

  Now, I had been raised on this same Hudson River, albeit farther to the north where the channel was less imposing, but I still maintained a healthy respect for the hazards of small boats in open water. I wasn’t pleased when Alexander announced that he would on occasion employ the boat to cross to New Windsor, and when he tried to sweeten the prospect by offering to take me as well, I swiftly declined. Like most men from the Caribbean, Alexander could swim. I, like every other lady of my acquaintance, could not, and the prospect of being dragged down to the river’s bottom by the anchor of my water-logged quilted petticoats was one I chose to avoid.

  Yet despite Alexander’s restlessness and the uncertainty of his future (and my refusal to employ the boat), we were wonderfully content that spring. By most standards, we could still be considered newlyweds, and able to find true happiness with nothing more than each other’s company.

  Now freed from his aide’s desk at headquarters, Alexander attacked his future with furious energy. He wrote letter after letter, no longer for His Excellency but on his own behalf, beseeching every man of rank or influence whom he knew (and a few whom he didn’t) in hopes of securing the much-desired field appointment.

  But he was also looking beyond the army. The cost of the long war and the parsimony of the individual states had finally made the Continental currency issued by Congress worthless, and the only money that meant anything was hard coins from other countries. To seek a solution to the crisis, Congress had at last decided to appoint a minister specifically to address the country’s finance—a decision that Alexander thought was long overdue. In fact, Alexander had many more opinions and thoughts on financial affairs than I’d ever realized.

  With our windows thrown open to the breezes off the water, our little brick lodgings became almost a schoolhouse for me as Alexander outlined his beliefs and the policies he’d implement if it were up to him. He’d seen the woes that the states caused to Congress and the army, and doubted the country could continue in such a scattered condition. Instead he believed the individual states must abandon much of their individual powers, and come together to create a single, stronger entity through a national government. He believed this government should have the power to levy taxes and tariffs, create laws, and raise an army if necessary, all to better serve its citizens. Most of all he believed the country needed a single treasury or bank to secure a national currency, and do away with the worthless paper money issued by each state.

  These were such new ideas that I marveled. To hear Alexander speak this way gave me fresh appreciation of his innate brilliance, and the complicated workings of his elegant mind. He could speak by the hour, raking his fingers through his hair as he paced back and forth, and I listened, rapt.

  I was a sounding board for him, and he claimed that explaining to me helped him to clarify these complicated theories and notions. I’d heard many well-educated gentlemen discus
s similar subjects at my father’s table; Alexander outspoke them all with a depth of knowledge and a neatness of speech so that I, as untutored as I was, could understand him with ease, and share his excitement.

  While Alexander himself could have made an excellent superintendent of finance, even I had to concede that the post would never be given to him: a twenty-six-year-old gentleman without family or fortune whose sole business experience had been working as a merchant’s clerk on Nevis. Instead Congress chose Robert Morris, a former fellow member, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and most importantly, a gentleman-merchant said to be the wealthiest in Philadelphia. I remembered seeing his carriage drive past me when I’d visited that city, with his family’s crest painted on the door and footmen in livery with silver lace, as if he were a great nobleman in London.

  Looking to the future, Alexander resolved to make himself known to Mr. Morris with a detailed letter explaining the same philosophies that he’d been explaining to me. And what a letter it turned out to be: page after page after page, the written equivalent of his addresses to me. He wasn’t simply describing the monetary problems that Congress faced at present, but suggesting an entirely new kind of financial model for government to follow the war.

  When his ideas came too fast and he became unable to keep still from excitement, he’d thrust the pen toward me, and I continued to write what he dictated as he paced the room. In jest I said I’d become an “aide-de-Alexander,” which made him laugh. He said he preferred to think of me his “amanuensis,” a much more elegant and literary Latin term. Either way, I relished the role, and when Mr. Morris replied with appreciative praise, I rejoiced with Alexander not just as his wife, but as his partner—and his amanuensis.

  But he was sharing his ideas more publicly, too, in a series of articles that were published in the New-York Packet that summer. He did not credit himself as the author (something few gentlemen did, and also unwise for his military aspirations). Instead he wrote under the initials A. B., yet those in power recognized him as the author, and took note.