“You are right, dearest, you are right,” he said ruefully. “For your sake, I must be more rational, more thoughtful. As soon as the treaty is passed, I promise I’ll step back from politics entirely. You have my word.”
He raised my hand and kissed it by way of a pledge, and I smiled in return. But I’d heard this promise too many times by now. It was not that he willfully broke his word to me, but more that his very nature found such promises impossible to keep.
Yet because my love for him continued to burn brightly—and in fact I felt as if I grew even more devoted to him with each passing year—I did not quarrel with this latest promise, or question it aloud. Instead I simply agreed, and prayed that perhaps this time he might find the strength to keep it.
Soon after this, I joined Alexander in New York. Our new home was at 26 Broadway, and like most of the houses in the neighborhood, it was three stories tall and fashioned of brick, with an enclosed yard and small garden in the rear, and of a size for our large family. The house was not only pleasantly situated within the city, but also conveniently close to Alexander’s office. I considered this house as more our home, and less a setting for entertainments, than the second house in Philadelphia had been. To be sure, we continued to offer a hospitable table to our friends, but now that Alexander was no longer secretary, gone, too, were the lavish entertainments for mere political acquaintances and dignitaries. I did not miss them. I preferred a less formal supper or dinner, one that relied more for its success upon the food and conversation than wine, spectacle, and an extravagant display of silver. It was also a wise transition, given the new economies I’d put into place for the household (which, fortunately, Alexander hadn’t yet recognized for what they were).
Most importantly, in the new house we were once again united as a family. While Alexander enjoyed our time in Albany, he always seemed to draw his energy and fiercest intensity from the city around him, and I hoped our presence would prove a sobering influence.
It did, to the extent that Alexander didn’t engage in any further brawling in the streets, or issue challenges for duels. He did, however, throw himself into the presidential election for a leader to replace President Washington. Like every good New York Federalist, his primary goal was to confound Thomas Jefferson and keep him from the presidency. But he’d never particularly cared for John Adams, either, the current vice president, who was the Federalists’ leading candidate. To him, Mr. Adams was high-strung and often irrational, and perhaps most damning to Alexander, he had no military experience, somehow avoiding the army during the Revolution, which meant he was without any of the qualities that had made President Washington so unrivaled as a leader.
Instead Alexander attempted to promote a more moderate gentleman from South Carolina named Thomas Pinckney for president, hoping that Mr. Adams would again be elected to the lesser position. Despite his best efforts, Mr. Adams was elected president, and the odious Mr. Jefferson vice president. When Mr. Adams learned that Alexander had lobbied against him, the disaffection between them grew into open scorn and contempt.
This election had irrevocably changed the government. Instead of the friendship, respect, and regard that Alexander had always enjoyed with President Washington, he now was confronted by two men who actively despised him. If ever there were a time for him to turn his back completely on politics, this was it.
But Alexander had two final services to perform for President Washington before he left office, and both depended on me as well.
The first involved one more French émigré, escaped from the horrors of the Terror in Paris to wash up upon our welcoming shore. Georges Washington Gilbert de Lafayette was no ordinary refugee, however. He was the fifteen-year-old son of the Marquis de Lafayette, one of my husband’s closest friends and fellow officers from the Revolution. President Washington had regarded the marquis almost as a son, and in gratitude the marquis had named his only son after the then-General Washington.
But the Jacobins had treated the elder Lafayette most barbarously. Not only had he been separated from his family and imprisoned, but his wife and their two young daughters were imprisoned as well, while his grandmother, mother, and sister had all become victims of the guillotine. Only his son had escaped capture with his tutor, Monsieur Frestrel, and had made their way to Philadelphia. At first General and Lady Washington had welcomed the pair to the President’s Residence, but their presence created a diplomatic quandary. The boy was a refugee, and if he was given sanctuary in an official residence, he could single-handedly corrupt America’s careful neutrality. When the president asked if we, as private citizens, might shelter him instead, Alexander agreed in an instant. There was always room for another, or two, in our house.
As could only be expected, Georges was shy, thin, and melancholy, and for the first weeks in our house, he followed me about like a lost puppy. Georges’s English was better than my French, though I soon found the best way to communicate with him was through apples, gingerbread, and slices of pie with cheese, the common language of all boys. Although he and our son Philip were close in age, they could not have been more different in temperament. Yet when Philip came home from boarding for the holidays, Philip and Georges became fast friends. For Alexander, who justly feared for the marquis’s life, the friendship between their sons had an almost noble and poignant symmetry that, out of the boys’ sight, made him weep.
The second, and final, service that Alexander performed for the president proved to be perhaps the most enduring of their long time together. The president wished to deliver a farewell address to all citizens. The address would be published so that it could reach as many citizens as possible. Its message would reflect not only the president’s Federalist beliefs, but also his trust in the Constitution. The president wanted it to serve as a call for citizens to put aside their divisive quarreling, and come together in a single, strong, unified country—the country he had always envisioned, and the country he had served not just as president, but also as commander-in-chief during the Revolution.
The president had always realized he’d no natural gift for composition, and required the assistance of another to give shape to his ideas. When he’d considered not running for a second term in 1791, he’d shared his notes with Mr. Madison, then in the president’s favor as a fellow Virginian, and he’d written a first draft that had subsequently been put aside. Now, however, the president naturally turned to Alexander to write this important document, giving him not only his own notes, but also the old draft penned by Mr. Madison.
Because it was important that the country believe the address was the president’s own words, Alexander took great care to compose it in secret in the evenings, away from the constant bustle of clerks, clients, messengers, and students that filled his law office. Instead he wrote the address entirely at his desk at home, and he was adamant that I sit beside him.
Writing at home also meant he could be informally dressed, as was often his custom for serious writing, in an old silk dressing gown over his nightshirt. It was early August when he began, and the windows to his library were thrown open to let in any cooler air that might come our way. Through a trick of the evening breeze, we could smell the saltiness of the harbor in the air that ruffled up from the water along Wall Street, and hear the bells on the ships tied up at the docks. Beside the open window, fireflies brushed against the wide green leaves of the mulberry bush, bright dots of light in the night.
“I have to consider that many people will have the address read to them, much like a sermon,” he explained, tapping the end of his pen against the edge of the desk. “The words must sound as well upon the ear when spoken aloud as when read.”
I nodded, curling my bare feet beneath me in the chair. I’d brought a stocking to knit while he wrote, mindless handwork that wouldn’t take from my concentration or require light, for the two brass candlesticks on his desk were for him, not me.
“Commence when ready, Colonel Hamilton,” I teased, lowering my voice to make it s
ound masculine and military. Even though writing the address was a serious matter, sitting here with him reminded me of all the other papers and essays and reports he had composed with me over time, especially when we’d first been wed.
He smiled warmly at me, likely thinking back to that time, too. “I don’t believe a lieutenant is necessary tonight,” he said. “Rather you must be to me what Molière’s old nurse was to him.”
I nodded eagerly, for he’d explained this story to me so many times that it had become part of his writing ritual, too. Apparently, the French playwright Molière had read his work out loud to his old nursemaid, relying on her ear to tell him if the words sang as they should or not.
“Mais oui,” I said, two of the few French words I knew, and he chuckled. He held up the small sheaf of papers that was Mr. Madison’s draft.
“We won’t be requiring these,” he said, pointedly putting them aside on a nearby chair. “I fear Madison’s words are much like him. Stolid and heavy, yet without much substance.”
“You don’t need them,” I said confidently. “You’ve plenty of words of your own.”
“That I do,” he said, dipping his pen into the inkwell, and I realized his thoughts were already gathering. For a long moment, he held the pen poised over the paper, and then began to write, saying the words out loud for me to hear as my needles clicked away their stitches.
“Friends and fellow citizens,” he began. “The period for a new election of a president—no, of a citizen—to administer the executive government of America—”
“Perhaps it should be the ‘United States’ instead of America,” I suggested. “If he wishes to urge the country toward unity, then it cannot be stated often enough.”
He nodded without looking away from the paper before him. “The executive government of the United States . . .”
It took us several long nights before he had the words to his satisfaction, and as we often did, I wrote out the final copy for him to take to the president for his approval. In the end, it was thirty-two pages long, and for Alexander it had become something of a labor of love and regard, the last he’d do for his president and his general. No one was aware that he’d done it, exactly as was proper.
The farewell address was printed first in Philadelphia on September 19, 1796, and reappeared in numerous cities throughout the country afterward. It was almost universally hailed and applauded, and treasured for containing the final public words of a great gentleman. Only the Democratic-Republicans dared mock it, and by so doing, only made mockeries of themselves. The address was so popular that enterprising printers made it available in pamphlet form, selling briskly for many years afterward, its wisdom never fading.
Not long after it first appeared, Alexander and I were on our way home from a pleasing autumn walk along the Battery when an old soldier approached us. Bent and scarred, yet still wearing the tattered remnants of his blue uniform coat from twenty years before, he’d a bundle of the pamphlets to sell from a haversack over his shoulder.
“His Excellency’s final address to th’ nation, sir,” he said, waving a copy in Alexander’s face. “Help a poor old soldier, sir, an’ read the words of th’ greatest general in th’ world.”
Alexander bought a copy, generously giving the man four times what he’d asked.
“Another for the collection,” he said as he handed it to me. “Poor old fellow! He’s no idea that he just sold me my own work.”
Once again he glanced back over his shoulder to the old soldier, his gaze lingering with a melancholy air. It wasn’t until later, when I thought about it again, that I realized when my husband had pitied the “poor old fellow,” he’d really been speaking of himself.
CHAPTER 20
New York, New York
May 1797
“Will you not play, Eliza?” my sister Angelica asked as she joined me where I stood beside the card table. “You needn’t worry if you don’t know the rules. Loo is a wickedly simple game, and I’m sure you’d have it after a hand or two.”
“Thank you, no,” I murmured. “I’d rather watch.”
The play itself might be simple, but to me what was truly terrifying was the speed with which the players, women and men, won and lost large sums, and without showing any reaction, either. Mr. Church himself was dealing the cards, his fingers quick to dispense pasteboard and luck, good and bad. He’d only grown heavier whilst he’d been in London, his face rounder and his chin swelling grandly over his tightly wrapped neck cloth. Following the new fashions, he’d ceased to powder his hair, and instead wore it cropped, shiny, and very black against his face.
“Then I shall watch with you,” Angelica said, looping her arm through mine. “Anything to be in your company once again.”
I smiled, just as I’d been smiling ever since Angelica, Mr. Church, and their five children had returned to New York two weeks ago. I still didn’t know what had brought them back: whether Angelica had finally worn her husband down with her constant pleas to return to America, or if Mr. Church himself had at last soured on his heady life in London.
No matter. Alexander and I could not be happier to have them back with us, and it was clear that the rest of New York society agreed with us. Mr. Church had had Alexander purchase the grandest house available for them so that once he and Angelica had arrived, they could be immediately at home, and immediately giving parties like this one.
Overnight the Churches had become the wealthiest family in New York City, and they lived on a scale of ostentation that had never been seen here before. Their house was filled with carved and gilded furnishings, paintings and sculptures, silver and porcelain, and because Mr. Church liked to play and wager, they’d also brought with them the accoutrements of a private gaming house. It was all very fast and very extravagant, and fashionable New Yorkers flocked to parties like this one.
Her diamond earrings swinging, Angelica leaned forward to kiss the top of her husband’s head. “For luck, darling.”
He grunted in acknowledgment, and didn’t look up from his cards. I know my sister loved her husband, but I couldn’t help but think I’d made much the better choice in mine, even if mine was poor and hers was rich.
The crowded room seemed suddenly warm to me, and I opened my ivory fan.
“I believe I’d actually prefer to go to the other room and sit for a bit, Angelica, if you do not mind,” I said. “I’m feeling a bit tired.”
Angelica’s merriment immediately changed to concern. “Are you unwell? Should I find Hamilton?”
“No, no, I’m perfectly well,” I protested as she guided me to a silk-covered settee. “Only tired.”
I was halfway through my seventh pregnancy, the first since I’d miscarried three years before, and because of that misadventure Angelica in particular was treating me as if I were made of glass.
“You look so beautiful tonight, Eliza, that I forget that you’re enciente,” she said, using the French word that made my condition sound so much more elegant than it was. “That gown is perfection.”
I smiled wryly. There was much less distinction (though much the same cost) in gowns now, with nearly every woman in the room in white cotton muslin, short sleeves, and a high waist, and I was no exception.
“If it makes you overlook how sizable I’ve become,” I said, “then I must be sure to thank those dressmakers in Paris and London for contriving a new fashion that conveniently hides the waist.”
“You’re not the first to make that observation.” Angelica lowered her chin and raised her brows, the way she did when ready to relay an especially delicious morsel of scandal. “Of course, you are respectably wed and so there’s no doubt that your child is your divine Hamilton’s, but Mr. Church vows that the fashion was first designed to accommodate all the London ladies with lovers who need to hide their little inconveniences.”
“ ‘Little inconveniences’!” I repeated, stunned she’d use that expression, and instinctively I rested a protective hand across my belly. I do n
ot know which shocked me more: that my worldly sister could speak so blithely of innocent babies, or the wanton ladies who’d conceived them outside of marriage.
“Ah, you know how blunt Mr. Church can be,” she said, unperturbed. “In truth he used a much more direct word.”
“I pray he doesn’t use it in Alexander’s hearing,” I said uneasily. “One of the papers in Philadelphia claimed that Mr. Adams himself has taken to calling my husband ‘that Creole bastard,’ and I’m terrified that Alexander will go demand satisfaction from the president on account of it.”
“Oh, dear,” Angelica said. “Although no one would fault him if he did. And consider the service he’d do for the country, ridding us all of that fussy little bag of noxious wind!”
“Don’t even make jests like that, I beg you,” I said. I was serious, too. Soon after Mr. Adams had been elected, Alexander had written him a long letter of congratulation, and included a compendium of suggestions and proposals for managing his new responsibilities as president and negotiating the government. It was all sound advice drawn from my husband’s long experience at President Washington’s side, and presented in the most respectful fashion possible. President Washington would have considered it both generous and useful, as any wise man would.
But Mr. Adams wasn’t wise. He was, as Angelica had said, a fussy little bag of noxious wind. Instead of finding my husband’s memorandum useful, he declared it to be insulting, and wondered aloud whether the man who’d written such a piece of rubbish had lost his wits. As can be imagined, this ingratitude had not sat well with Alexander, who’d every right to feel insulted by the ill usage. It had taken considerable persuading on my part to convince him not to take offense.
“The best I can say of Mr. Adams is that he has no use for the capital, and keeps to Massachusetts instead,” I said, fluttering my fan before my face. “The more distance there is between him and Alexander, the better.”
Angelica shook her head. “What manner of president avoids his own capital?” she said. “And what a slovenly display that makes to the rest of the world! There should be parties every night, musicales, balls, and all with the most brilliant company that can possibly be assembled.”
I, Eliza Hamilton Page 42