I, Eliza Hamilton

by Susan Holloway Scott

  “I don’t wish you to be so sorrowful, Eliza,” she said. Thanks to her husband’s burgeoning wealth, she already looked as if she’d embraced the sophisticated airs of Paris; she wore a pair of sizable purple amethyst drop earrings and a necklace to match, the gold settings glittering in the fading sun. “I’ve wished all my life to visit Paris.”

  “I know you have,” I said, unable to do as she’d bid and keep the sadness from my voice. “I’m happy for your sake, Angelica, but I still will miss you. To have an entire ocean between us!”

  “We’ll write often,” she promised. “Hamilton has already sworn to write me with all the news that you forget.”

  “He will, too,” I said. He and Angelica were avid correspondents, writing often to discuss books and treatises they’d both read as well as the family news I often forgot. Although Alexander assured me my letters were far more dear to him, I didn’t doubt that hers were the more interesting. “His letters are so much better than mine.”

  She smiled, and to my amusement, she didn’t disagree. Instead she linked her fingers into mine, and leaned her head against my shoulder.

  “I shall miss you, too, Eliza,” she said. “You, and your little Philip, and our dear Hamilton, but most of all you. No woman has ever been blessed with a better sister.”

  “Nor I,” I said softly. “You must make certain that Mr. Church doesn’t keep you abroad forever, but brings you back home to us in good time.”

  “He won’t keep us in Paris forever, no,” she said, a hint of melancholy in her voice now, too. “But he does wish to reside in London, at least while our children are young. I’d hoped that over time he’d come to view New York as his home, too, but he still longs for England.”

  I nodded, understanding. Even a woman as independent as Angelica must bow to her husband when it came to where they’d make their home.

  “But perhaps we needn’t be kept apart for long,” she said, willing herself to be more cheerful. “Perhaps rather than me imploring John to return to New York, you should have your Hamilton bring you to Paris. Imagine us together as fine ladies of fashion!”

  “I can imagine you that way, Angelica, strolling through the golden halls of Versailles in full hoops and with jewels around your throat,” I teased, unable to picture myself ever in such a role. “I’ll be perfectly content as Mrs. Hamilton of New York.”

  “You may be content with such a mundane life, but Hamilton won’t be,” she said. “He’ll never be satisfied with being a mere attorney. I’ll expect him to have replaced Clinton as governor of New York by the time we return.”

  I laughed at that. “He swears he’s had his fill of politics, and that all his dreams have been dashed,” I said. “The past year in Philadelphia with Congress has soured him on it, and now he vows to dedicate himself entirely to practicing law.”

  She glanced at me slyly. “Do you truly believe that, Eliza? In your heart, and with your head? That your brilliant, mercurial husband will so meekly bow his neck to the yoke of the law?”

  I looked away from her, out to where the sun was setting over the hills. She knew me so well, my sister, and she knew my husband, too. Even as I longed for Alexander to be happy with the profession he’d chosen, I’d wondered if such contentment was possible for him. I didn’t need my sister to remind me of his ambitions and dreams for the new government. But then Angelica had also always been drawn to the most public aspects of my husband’s character—the parts that were indeed brilliant and mercurial—and ignored the side of him that was kind and generous and endlessly devoted to Philip and me.

  “Alexander will follow the path that he chooses for himself,” I said carefully, a truth we could both agree upon. “For now, I believe that path leads to a law office on Manhattan Island.”

  “Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t,” my sister mused. “We shall all see in time, won’t we?”

  It was nearly dark now, with the servants lighting the first lanterns near the stables, and reluctantly we turned back. The shadow of The Pastures loomed before us, a reassuring block of warm brick and memories sharp against the twilight sky. It remained the only lasting home that either of us had known so far, and there was good reason why we always returned here, even now as we were about to say good-bye.

  Our farewell had begun in earnest.

  “Mamma says she’d always believed that her daughters would live within a day’s ride of The Pastures,” I said softly, “and that none of us would ever dare go any farther.”

  “She has Peggy and Stephen at Rensselaerwyck,” Angelica said. “That’s not far. Now that they’re married, they’ll never leave the manor, unless Peggy chooses to climb from the window again.”

  “Don’t say that to Mamma,” I warned, but still I laughed with her.

  “She and Papa will have you and Hamilton in New York,” Angelica said. “True, it’s not Albany, but it’s not so very far away, either.”

  “But you shall be in Paris,” I said wistfully. “Oh, Angelica, sometimes I feel that all I ever do is say good-bye to those I love most, over and over and over again.”

  She didn’t answer, and in that moment I realized she felt the same as I. The men we loved would determine our destinies along with their own, no matter how we might wish otherwise.

  We walked the rest of the way arm in arm, our heads bowed, in sisterly agreement. We said nothing more, nor did we need to.

  CHAPTER 14

  New York City, New York

  June 1784

  Alexander prided himself on being a gentleman of his word, and as soon as he was done with Congress, he made arrangements for us to move from Albany to New York City. The last of the British troops sailed from the harbor on November 25, 1783, and the wagons with our belongings had rumbled up before our new home soon after, during the first week of December.

  Alexander had even kept his long-ago promise to me of a house on Wall Street. Ours was number fifty-seven, an agreeable brick house of three stories with a small balcony, and far more pleasant and commodious than any other place we’d yet lived. Beside it was number fifty-six, which Alexander used as his office. Wall Street was wide and comparatively untouched by the war, unlike so much of the rest of the city. We weren’t quite at the most fashionable end of the street (where Colonel and Mrs. Burr lived), but the other houses, offices, and shops around us were all well kept and neat. There were even a few buildings that retained the stepped roofs preferred by the Dutch, a familiar sight to me from Albany, and one that made me smile as if seeing old friends.

  So handsome was our new house, in fact, that when we first arrived I suspected its rent was more than Alexander could comfortably afford. He had just completed a year earning very little as a delegate to Congress, and a year before that in recovering from the war and in studying for the bar, as well as his negligible position of tax-receiver. To be sure, his prospects were excellent. Because by law no lawyers with Tory sympathies were now permitted to practice their profession, there were fewer than fifty attorneys in the entirety of the state. Any lawyer with ability, education, and a modicum of luck was bound to prosper, and Alexander possessed all of those qualities in abundance, plus an invaluable reputation as a patriotic hero from the war.

  But prospects did not pay the grocer or the butcher, nor satisfy the hairdresser who came each morning to tend to Alexander’s hair, nor even the laundrywomen who washed our stockings and linens. Like most wives, I was not privy to the details of my husband’s financial affairs, but I suspected our humble resources were stretched as far as they could be and perhaps beyond. Finally one morning while he was dressing for court I dared to ask if this were the case, and whether I should be making any extra economies in our household.

  “My dearest wife,” he said, clearly startled I’d broach such a subject, and a bit wounded that I had as well. “How has this concern arisen? Have you wanted for anything? Have I not provided for you and our son as I should?”

  “No, no, Alexander, not at all,” I said quic
kly. “But if there is a need to be frugal whilst we establish ourselves here in this place, I shall happily oblige.”

  “There is no need for any obliging, Betsey.” He smiled as he finished buttoning his waistcoat, and came to kiss me. “I don’t want you worrying about such trivialities, especially not now.”

  He rested his palm gently on my growing belly. I was expecting our second child at the end of the summer, and we both hoped that this time we’d be blessed with a girl, a sister for our son. Philip was now two, a chattering, toddling fellow who was more his own little man every day, and as dear as he was, I was anticipating the sweetness of another new babe.

  “You must follow your sister’s orders,” he continued, “and think only the most beautiful of thoughts to ensure a handsome daughter.”

  I laughed softly, and placed my hand over his. Angelica had given birth to a daughter in December in Paris, and named her Elizabeth in my honor. Even before then, Alexander and I had decided that if our next child were a girl, she would be called Angelica.

  “No more worrying, Betsey,” he continued with mock severity. “Not about money, or anything else.”

  He kissed me again, which was often his way of ending our conversations, and a delightful way it was, too. It wasn’t until much later, when it no longer mattered, that I learned I’d been entitled to my worries. Alexander was too proud to borrow money from my father, but he hadn’t the same scruples about small loans here and there from more solvent friends. Yet he was adept at juggling, and he always paid back what he’d borrowed. During those early years in New York, I was never the wiser. I trusted him, and I obeyed my sister, and did my best to think only the most beautiful of thoughts.

  But New York City in 1784 was not a place for beauty of any kind. If the war had barely touched Philadelphia, it had ravaged and ravished poor New York. The city as it stood now bore little resemblance to the handsome place I’d remembered visiting when I was a girl. Several hard-fought battles, a number of calamitous fires, and eight years of occupation by the British army had left much of the city in ruins.

  Without timber, laborers, or inclination, nothing had been rebuilt, and looting and other thievery was so commonplace so as to go largely noticed. It wasn’t just the enemy that had caused this mischief, either. Hundreds of Tory sympathizers had crowded into the city for refuge, and many had lived in makeshift tents and lean-tos among the broken foundations of once-splendid homes, churches, and public buildings. Standing water that collected in the hollowed remains of cellars turned foul, and empty merchant docks along the waterfront rotted from disuse. Every tree, fence, and garden bench had been claimed for firewood, and the entire city had a scraped, flat look because of it.

  Now with the peace in place, the Tories who could had fled to Canada, to Britain, or to the Caribbean, and their absence left more holes in the city’s fabric. They’d taken more than simply their families: with them had gone their wealth, their knowledge, their professions. Overnight the city’s population had shrunk to a fraction of its former size.

  But if many left, many others were returning. Some, like us, had come for the opportunity presented by a city in need of rebuilding. Many more were patriots who had been forced to leave because of the British population. Now faced with the shattered remnants of their businesses and homes, they came together into a vengeful crowd of discontent, greed, and resentment, determined to attack any of their neighbors reputed to harbor Tory sympathies.

  The persecution was blatant, and shameless. I witnessed the effects myself. I often passed a small shop in the next street that specialized in writing paper and pens. The shop was owned by an older man who’d come to New York decades ago from Liverpool, and his wife, who had been born here. Alas, there were rumors that they’d survived the occupation only because they’d been protected by the army as Tories. One morning as I walked by, the shop was empty, the front window smashed, the door torn from its hinges. In the street before the shop were the blackened remnants of a fire, charred fragments of wooden boxes and furnishings and curling bits of singed paper like drifting leaves. I paused to look with concern, and asked another passerby what malady had happened to the poor proprietor.

  “The old rascal got what he deserved last night,” he said bluntly, smirking. “Him and his wife, too. We’ve no use here for Tories who think they’re better’n the rest of us.”

  I never learned what became of the shopkeeper or his wife, and never saw them again, either.

  By March, matters had only grown worse. The legislature passed the Trespass Act, stating that good patriots had the right to sue any Tories responsible for damages to homes and properties left behind during the war. The Sons of Liberty, who had done so much to spur along the Revolution, re-emerged in a nefarious new form, and took the hatred another step further. Instead of espousing liberty and freedom as they once had, they promoted the persecution of Tories and Loyalists, and called for anyone who’d held Tory beliefs to be forced to leave the state by the first of May.

  It was impossible to avoid the ugly uneasiness gathering the city. Alexander, of course, did not avoid it, but instead jumped directly into the middle of the conflict. He began writing essays for the newspapers again, this time under the Roman name of Phocion, and pleading for tolerance.

  The pleas went unheard, as everyone except my husband had expected. But despite the pseudonym, everyone also knew that Alexander was Phocion, and he was accused of being a traitor, a sympathizer, a secret Tory in the pay of the British government—all harsh words for a man who’d served the cause of freedom so well.

  But while I was indignant upon Alexander’s behalf, he was not. The criticisms only spurred him to work harder.

  While his first cases in the city had been to settle the usual misunderstandings between businesses and bickering amongst families, he soon plunged into cases that defended the rights of Tories who’d remained, cases too prickly and unpopular for most other lawyers. As with all the cases he accepted (and unlike most other lawyers), he only took on those in which he believed the plaintiff was in the right; he cared far less about their ability to pay his fees, which meant that he wasn’t above accepting a pipe of wine or a side of beef in lieu of payment. For Alexander, it was the principle that mattered most, not the fee, and by the summer, those principles loomed large indeed to him.

  His most prominent case of this nature was presented in late June, and pitted a wealthy patriot widow, Mrs. Rutgers, who had owned a brewery ruined in the war, against Mr. Waddington, a Loyalist, who repaired the ruin at his own cost under martial orders of the occupying army, and made the brewery once again profitable. Now Mrs. Rutgers was suing Mr. Waddington for the astronomical sum of eight thousand pounds, claiming that this was the rent owed her for the use of her property.

  The fact that Alexander had accepted a case against a woman plaintiff showed me how important a case he considered it to be. He tended to be as gallant in his practice as he was in life, and often took cases for the sake of assisting a woman in difficulty, especially widows and spinsters who had no natural male champions.

  As always, Alexander explained this all to me as a way for solidifying his own thoughts and arguments. As always, I listened, this time over a long supper.

  We’d a small enclosed yard behind our house, and the two of us often dined there now that the spring had given way to warmer summer evenings. Like every other house in New York, our trees had been sacrificed to the war, and though I’d planted new saplings in the spring, for shade we relied upon a wide swath of striped canvas that we’d had strung from one wall to the next overhead: our Turkish tent, as Alexander cheerfully called it. In that spirit I’d put cushions on a bench beside the table, and when we’d no guests, we sat cozily side by side rather than with the table between us. We were informally dressed, too, I in a printed calico dressing gown and he in a chintz banyan, and both of us ready to discuss his most important case thus far.

  For reasons of sentiment, it was clear to me that the plai
ntiff, the widowed patriot Mrs. Rutgers, would be favored to prevail, and that this would be a difficult case for any attorney to win. I didn’t state this opinion at first, however. Though I might never have formally studied the law, I had learned a few things about how best to present my opinions to my husband.

  “How proud I am of you, dearest,” I began, smiling. “To take a case that every other lawyer in the city has avoided as being too prickly and difficult, and to champion poor beleaguered Mr. Waddington, too.”

  He frowned a bit, and I realized perhaps I’d been a shade too effusive.

  “It won’t be the swiftest case on the docket to be decided, no,” he said slowly, appraising me. “But then you knew that, Betsey, didn’t you?”

  I concentrated on refilling his glass with more wine. “You have always been a gentleman remarkable for your charity and kindness, Alexander, especially where your defendants are concerned.”

  He made a small disgruntled sound in his throat. “There’s more at stake than mere kindness, my dear.”

  “Kindness is never ‘mere,’ Alexander,” I said. “Especially given the grievous manner in which many of New York’s residents are being treated.”

  “Very well, then,” he said, raising the glass toward me in a salute before he drank. “There is more than charity at stake. A victorious country is judged by how it treats those whom it has vanquished. The treaty of peace that Congress signed stated that no former Loyalists were to suffer any further losses, not to their persons, liberty, or property.”

  So this was how he’d begin, and a good beginning it was, too. “That’s all true,” I said.